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In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
William James
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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Cannot
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Person
Philosophical
Meanwhile
Trying
Somehow
Answering
Mind
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Dressing
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More quotes by William James
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
William James
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
William James
The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, words, words, words, must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
William James
Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
William James
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James
True is the name for whatever idea starts the verification process, useful is the name for its completed function in experience
William James
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
William James
Footnotes -- little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
William James
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
I believe there is no source of deception in the investigation of nature which can compare with a fixed belief that certain kinds of phenomena are IMPOSSIBLE.
William James
The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
William James
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
William James
The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.
William James
Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
William James
Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
William James
Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.
William James
Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
William James
The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James