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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.

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
Attempt
Harmony
Grace
Religion
Order
Things
Unseen

More quotes by William James

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Man can alter his life by altering his thinking.
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To change one's life: a. Start immediately b. B. Do it flamboyantly c. No exceptions Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted.
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
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Religion must be considered vindicated in a certain way from the attacks of her critics.
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The suspicion is in the air nowadays that the superiority of one of our formulas to another may not consist so much in its literal 'objectivity,' as in subjective qualities like its usefulness, its 'elegance,' or its congruity with our residual beliefs
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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
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We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.
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Formula to live your dream: 1. Be bold. 2. Begin now, 3. No exceptions.
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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.
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Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
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The teacher's prime concern should be to ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.
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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.
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The aim of science is always to reduce complexity to simplicity.
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
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Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.
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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.
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