Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
Interpretation
True quality, regardless of its cost, is ultimately valuable and should be prioritized over mere monetary considerations.
William James highlights that when one is in pursuit of quality, the ultimate achievement of superior quality comes at a price that is insignificant compared to its worth. This suggests that prioritizing true excellence, whether in experiences or possessions, brings greater value than the financial cost associated with it.
In practice
In a presentation about business ethics, one could quote this to stress the importance of quality over cost.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
Gratitude develops faith. The surest path out of a slump is marked by the road sign "thank you, God."
God much are the truly wealthy. So our inner happiness depends not on what we experience but on the degree of our gratitude to God, Gratitude β the Secret of Life.
You must not do, you must not even try to do, the will of the Father unless you are prepared to 'know of the doctrine'.
Deep down in me I knowed it was a lie, and He knowed it. You can't pray a lie - I found that out.
A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.
Nothing in the world is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible, nothing can surpass it. The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the Master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people's greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.
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