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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.

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
Whether
Necessity
Drab
Christian
Saint
Stoic
Universe
Passionate
Resignation
Makes
Emotional
Accepts
Way
Difference
Saints
Accepting
Tremendous
Differences
Practicals
Happiness
Practical

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We can act as if there were a God feel as if we were free consider Nature as if she were full of special designs lay plans as if we were to be immortal and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.
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The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.
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How many of us persist in a precipitate course which, but for a moment of heedlessness we might never have entered upon, simply because we hate to change our minds.
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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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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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The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
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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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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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Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.
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The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
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There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
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We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.
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It is so human a book that I don't see how belief in its divine authority can survive the reading of it.
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The discovery of the power of our thoughts will prove to be the most important discovery of our time
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