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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.

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
Young
Give
Giving
Slender
Striving
Aging
Pleasant
Strive

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Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life
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The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.
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Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
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New habits can be launched.
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Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. The sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse, or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. . . . And emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them.
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Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
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Our esteem for facts has not neutralized in us all religiousness. It is itself almost religious. Our scientific temper is devout.
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With no attempt there can be no failure with no failure no humiliation.
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Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
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Most men's friendships are too inarticulate.
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The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
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Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.
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Habit is the great flywheel of society.
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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
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On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true.
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
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