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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
Affinity
Companionship
Organic
Tenderness
Joyousness

More quotes by 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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Agisci come se quel che fai, facesse la differenza. La fa!
William James
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...These healers...my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories....But their facts are patent and startling and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity.
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.
William James
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The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
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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So it is with children who learn to read fluently and well: They begin to take flight into whole new worlds as effortlessly as young birds take to the sky.
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 trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.
William James
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void.
William James
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Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
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 must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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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.
William James
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History is a bath of blood.
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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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
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If WE claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp.
William James
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If it works, it's true.
William James