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

More quotes by William James

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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
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Lets take full advantage of this discovery
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My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
William James
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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
William James
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Do something everyday for no other reason than you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
William James
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Plasticity, then, in the wide sense of the word, means the possession of a structure weak enough to yield to an influence, but strong enough not to yield all at once. Each relatively stable phase of equilibrium in such a structure is marked by what we may call a new set of habits.
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[Pragmatism's] only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience's demands, nothing being omitted.
William James
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The most immutable barrier in nature is between one man's thoughts and another's.
William James
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
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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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Our faith is faith in someone else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.
William James
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To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.
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It would probably astound each of them beyond measure to be let into his neighbor's mind and to find how different the scenery there was from that in his own.
William James
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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
William James