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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.

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
Tenderness
Joyousness
Affinity
Companionship
Organic

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Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
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Life is one long struggle between conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.
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We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves noticed, and noticed favorably, by our kind.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
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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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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
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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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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as the sculptor works on his block of stone.
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Mankind's common instinct for reality has always held the world to be essentially a theatre for heroism.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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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.
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The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
William James
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
William James
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The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, jammed and temporarily caught in peculiar positions, form our brains and the 'evolution' of brains, if understood, would be simply the account of how the atoms came to be so caught and jammed.
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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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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
William James