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The perfection of rottenness.

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
Rottenness
Sarcastic
Perfection

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To consider hypotheses is surely always better than to dogmatize ins blaue hinein
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
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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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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
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The perfect stillness of the night was thrilled by a more solemn silence. The darkness held a presence that was all the more felt because it was not seen. I could not any more have doubted that HE was there than that I was. Indeed, I felt myself to be, if possible, the less real of the two.
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Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system
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A winner's attitude: it may be difficult, but it's possible. A loser's attitude: It may be possible, but it's too difficult.
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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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The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the 'pure' experience. It is only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet.
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If it works, it's true.
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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
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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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What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise.
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You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
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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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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
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