Quote

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.

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
Always
Perfect
Deeply
Mingled
Never
Enjoy
Satisfaction
Anxieties
Think
Comes
Anxiety
Jefferson
Thinking
Reality
Capacity
Successes
Life
Give
Needed
Thomas
Feel
Risk
Freely
Feels
Simply
Fortunate
Giving
Happiness
Sadness
Perplex

More quotes by William James

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So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end...and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
William James
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Life shall be built in doing and suffering and creating.
William James
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Our view of the world is truly shaped by what we decide to hear.
William James
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When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
William James
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
William James
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
William James
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When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a choice.
William James
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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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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
William James
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I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
William James
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You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
William James
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
William James
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Everyone knows that on any given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitement's of that day do not call forth. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. The human individual usually lives far within his limits.
William James
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot
William James
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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.
William James
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
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The deepest hunger in human beings is the desire to be appreciated.
William James
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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections
William James
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What a magnificent land and race is this Britain! Everything about them is of better quality than the corresponding thing in the U.S.... Yet I believe (or suspect) that ours is eventually the bigger destiny, if we can only succeed in living up to it.
William James