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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.

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
Habit
Practicals
Emotional
Practical
Military
Bear
Small
Bears
Spiritual
Destiny
Life
Mass
Toward
Irresistibly
Intellectual
Habits

More quotes by William James

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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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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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All the daily routine of life, our dressing and undressing, the coming and going from our work or carrying through of its various operations, is utterly without mental reference to pleasure and pain, except under rarely realized conditions.
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Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is which we have and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively.
William James
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
William James
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
William James
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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
William James
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
William James
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
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
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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
William James
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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
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Divinity lies all around us, but society remains too hidebound to accept that fact...The mother sea and the fountain-head of all religions lies in the mystical experiences of the individual.
William James
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Ideas are so much flat psychological surface unless some mirrored matter gives them cognitive lustre. This is why as a pragmatistI have so carefully posited 'reality' ab initio, and why throughout my whole discussion, I remain an epistemologist realist.
William James
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
William James