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

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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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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.
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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The greatest weapon we have to combat stress is the ability to choose our thoughts.
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If you want a confidence, act as if you already have it. Try the as if technique.
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The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.
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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
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The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
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There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man's lack of faith in his true Self.
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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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The greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.
William James
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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
William James
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness, and their companionship in the saintly life need in no way occasion surprise.
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The stream of thought flows on but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
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Our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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Choose a self and stand by it.
William James
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The thinker philosophizes as the lover loves. Even were the consequences not only useless but harmful, he must obey his impulse.
William James