'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth

We believe as much as we can. We would believe everything if we could.

I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)

Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to "keep" by force of mere inertia.

Most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits.

Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.

What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!