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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.

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
Keep
Littles
Little
Every
Gratuitous
Faculty
Exercise
Effort
Alive

More quotes by William James

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Whilst part of what we perceive comes through our senses from the object before us, another part (and it may be the larger part) always comes out of our own mind.
William James
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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The mind is made up by what it feeds upon.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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Of all the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul None is more gladdening or fruitful than to know You can regenerate and make yourself what you will.
William James
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Act in earnest and you will become earnest in all you do.
William James
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Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification processes
William James
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
William James
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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
William James
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
William James
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Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.
William James
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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But petitional prayer is only one department of prayer and if we take the word in the wider sense as meaning every kind of inward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine, we can easily see that scientific criticism leaves it untouched. Prayer in this wide sense is the very soul and essence of religion.
William James
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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
William James
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Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
William James
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Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
William James
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
William James
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General scepticism is the live mental attitude of refusing to conclude. It is a permanent torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than you can kill off obstinacy or practical joking.
William James
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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