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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

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
Pretensions
Pretension
Deception
Relief
Blessed
Internet
Give
Giving
Ratified

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The strenuous life tastes better
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Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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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!
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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The amount of psychology which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great.
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As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
William James
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The squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.
William James
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
William James
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
William James
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A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
William James
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Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
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The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party.
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Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
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If an unusual necessity forces us onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain point, when, gradually or suddenly, it passes away and we are fresher than before!
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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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Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
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