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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

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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
Real
Game
Something
Games
Life
Fighting
Withdraw
Like
Success
Eternally
Universe
Theatrical
May
Gained
Better
Private
Feels
Fight

More quotes by William James

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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.
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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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He who refuses to embrace a unique opportunity loses the prize as surely as if he had failed.
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Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.
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Man lives in only one small room of the enormous house of his consciousness.
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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
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.
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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill.
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There are two lives, the natural and the spiritual, and we must lose the one before we can participate in the other.
William James
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
William James
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
William James
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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
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If there is aught of good in the style, it is the result of ceaseless toil in rewriting. Everything comes out wrong with me at first but when once objectified in a crude shape, I can torture and poke and scrape and pat it till it offends me no more.
William James
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
William James