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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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Circumstance
Encounters
Gratitude
Circumstances
Mind
Good

More quotes by William James

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Our belief at the beginning of a doubtful undertaking is the one thing that assures the successful outcome of any venture.
William James
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
William James
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The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.
William James
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As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
William James
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Lay plans as if we were to be immortal.
William James
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
William James
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In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
William James
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Positive images of the future are a powerful and magnetic force... They draw us on and energize us, give us courage and will to take on important initiatives. Negative images of the future also have a magnetism. They pull the spirit downward in the path of despair.
William James
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
William James
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I am tired of the position of the dried-up critic and doubter. The believer is the true full man. (from a biography of James by Robert D. Richardson)
William James
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
William James
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You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
William James
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To kill time is not murder, it's suicide.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
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All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
William James
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A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William James
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A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.
William James
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
William James
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The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.
William James
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The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion.
William James