Quote

We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.

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
Lives
Forest
Also
Islands
Like
Forests
Trees
Roots
Sea
Darkness
Tree
Underground

More quotes by William James

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Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
William James
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Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.
William James
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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
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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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
William James
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The most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing.
William James
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All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.
William James
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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
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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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
William James
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The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
William James
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The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism.
William James
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
William James
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At bottom, the whole concern of religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe.
William James
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If evolution and the survival of the fittest be true at all, the destruction of prey and of human rivals must have been among the most important. . . . It is just because human bloodthirstiness is such a primitive part of us that it is so hard to eradicate, especially when a fight or a hunt is promised as part of the fun.
William James
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I know that you, ladies and gentlemen, have a philosophy, each and all of you, and that the most interesting and important thing about you is the way in which it determines the perspective in your several worlds.
William James
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The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will... An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
William James
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If it works, it's true.
William James