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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
Surround
Contradiction
Breath
Breaths
Thus
Happiness
Sepulchre
Natural
Infected
Seems
Surrounds

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To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
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Our errors are surely not such awfully solemn things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf.
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Evil is a disease and worry over disease is itself an additional form of disease, which only adds to the original complaint.
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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride.
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The teachers of this country, one may say, have its future in their hands.
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The pragmatist turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards power.
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