Quote

As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!

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
Need
Feathers
Hard
Target
Needs
Resistance
Trying
Celebrate
Rule
Fiction
Reading
Book
Hurling

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Whenever you're in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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To leap across an abyss, one is better served by faith than doubt.
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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But facts are facts, and if we only get enough of them theyare sure to combine.
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If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. How much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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The instinct of ownership is fundamental in man's nature.
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
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[Religion is] the attempt to be in harmony with an unseen order of things.
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All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
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