Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self — it makes li… - William James

One mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self — it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence.

A stream of ideal tendency embedded in the external structure of the world.

To the broody hen the notion would probably seem monstrous that there should be a creature in the world to whom a nestful of eggs was not utterly fascinating and precious and never-to-be-too-much-sat-upon object which it is to her.

"To breathe the air, how delicious! To speak, to walk, to seize something by the hand!... To be this incredible God I am!... O amazement of things, even the least particle! O spirituality of things! I too carol the Sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting; I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the growths of the earth.... I sing to the last the equalities, modern or old, I sing the endless finales of things, I say Nature continues — glory continues. I praise with electric voice, For I do not see one imperfection in the universe, And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last." So Rousseau, writing of the nine years he spent at Annecy, with nothing but his happiness to tell: —