PRESENT  OR  ABSENT?

Quote for Today - August 14,  2011

"William James, [the Harvard philosopher and psychologist], was walking along a Cambridge, Massachusetts, street accompanied by a pair of his students, a boy and a girl.  A large, imposing figure, white-bearded, swinging his cane, talking to himself, oblivious to the others, approached them. Remarked the girl: 'Whoever he is, he's the epitome of the absentminded professor.'  'What you really mean,' said James, ' is that he is present-minded somewhere else.'"

Clifton Fadiman, General Editor, The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, London, 1985, page 305.

Picture on top: William James (1842-1910)