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It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.
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
Age
Character
Wells
Well
Plaster
Never
Plasters
Like
Soften
World
Birthday
Thirty
More quotes by William James
An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
William James
...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
Science herself consults her heart when she lays it down that the infinite ascertainment of fact and correction of false belief are the supreme goods for man.
William James
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
William James
Neither moral relations nor the moral law can swing in vacuo. Their only habitat can be a mind which feels them and no world composed of merely physical facts can possibly be a world to which ethical propositions apply.
William James
We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
William James
The difference between an interesting and a tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by which the one is able to mediate these associations and connections, and in the dullness in discovering such transitions which the other shows.
William James
...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
Since you make evil or good by your own thoughts, it is your ruling of your thoughts which proves to be your principal concern.
William James
First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
William James
No one sees further into a generalization than his own knowledge of detail extends.
William James
No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
William James
An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total.
William James
Don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract. Lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, to feel, and to do.
William James
Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
William James
To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.
William James
For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
William James
