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It is only in the lonely emergencies of life that our creed is tested: then routine maxims fail, and we fall back on our gods.

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
Fail
Maxims
Failing
Emergencies
Creed
Fall
Creeds
Back
Tested
Life
Routine
Gods
Lonely

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Compared to what we ought to be, we are half awake.
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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.
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea... The islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom.
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time.
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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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I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
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It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it.
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The sovereign cure for worry is prayer.
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
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The power to move the world is in the subconcious mind
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
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