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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.

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
May
Vanity
Would
Appearance
Message
Messages
Appearances
Universal
Gather
Whatever
Phrase
Religion
Suggest
Universe
Phrases

More quotes by William James

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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
William James
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Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself.
William James
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
William James
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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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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
William James
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
William James
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Psychology saves us from mistakes. It makes us more clear as to what we are about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice at its back.
William James
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Far from being antecedent principles that animate the process, law, language, truth are but abstract names for its results.
William James
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From a pragmatic point of view, the difference between living against a background of foreigness (an indifferent Universe) and one of intimacy (a benevolent Universe) means the difference between a general habit of wariness and one of trust.
William James
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We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
William James
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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To be fertile in hypotheses is the first perquisite of creativity and to be willing to throw them away the moment experience contradicts them is the next.
William James
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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.
William James
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My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
William James
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
William James
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Human beings are born into this little span of life of which the best thing is its friendships and intimacies … and yet they leave their friendships and intimacies with no cultivation, to grow as they will by the roadside, expecting them to keep by force of mere inertia.
William James
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
William James
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To improve the golden moment of opportunity, and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.
William James