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There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker if sad, it must not scream or curse.

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
Serious
Grin
Religious
Solemn
Must
Tender
Something
Tenderness
Scream
Curse
Glad
Snicker
Attitude
Snickers

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There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. Not through mere perversity do men run after it.
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
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Individuality is founded in feeling
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
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Act the part and you will become the part.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
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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.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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For morality life is a war, and the service of the highest is a sort of cosmic patriotism which also calls for volunteers.
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The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
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As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
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