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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.

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
Must
Survive
Always
Survival
Life
Otherwise
Despair
Engulf
Deeper
Despairs
Divine
Degradation
Seems
Hence
Able
Divinity

More quotes by William James

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We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
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We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
William James
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
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It is your friends who make your world.
William James
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Philosophy, beginning in wonder, as Plato and Aristotle said, is able to fancy everything different from what it is. It sees the familiar as if it were strange, and the strange as if it were familiar. It can take things up and lay them down again. It rouses us from our native dogmatic slumber and breaks up our caked prejudices.
William James
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
William James
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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Our beliefs are really rules for action.
William James
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The good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind...that encounters it.
William James
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
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Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
William James
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When a thing is new, people say: ‘It is not true.’ Later, when its truth becomes obvious, they say: ‘It is not important.’ Finally, when its importance cannot be denied, they say: ‘Anyway, it is not new.
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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We are mere bundles of habits.
William James
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
William James
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Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.
William James
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
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Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help.
William James