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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

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
Breaths
Thus
Happiness
Sepulchre
Natural
Infected
Seems
Surrounds
Surround
Contradiction
Breath

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A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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'What would be better for us to believe!' This sounds very like a definition of truth
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The belief in free-will is not in the least incompatible with the belief in Providence, provided you do not restrict the Providence to fulminating nothing but fatal decrees.
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There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
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The mind of your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you, as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and think, and what they know or do not know, are as hard things for the teachers as for the general to find out.
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
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Religions have approved themselves they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.
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As Charles Lamb says, there is nothing so nice as doing good by stealth and being found out by accident, so I now say it is even nicer to make heroic decisions and to be prevented by 'circumstances beyond your control' from ever trying to execute them.
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So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast.
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Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation. There is in the living act of perception always something that glimmers and twinkles and will not be caught, and for which reflection comes too late.
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It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process.
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
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Instinct leads, logic does but follow.
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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
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... the intellect, everywhere invasive, shows everywhere its shallowing effect.
William James