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As the art of reading (after a certain stage in one's education) isthe art of skipping, so the art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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
Certain
Skipping
Overlook
Wise
Stage
Education
Knowing
Reading
Art
Isthe

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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
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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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The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
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In its broadest term, religion says that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in rightful relations to it.
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When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.
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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
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If you give appreciation to people, you win their goodwill. But more important than that, practicing this philosophy has made a different person of me.
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
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I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave.
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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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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
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Great indeed is Fear but it is not, as our military enthusiasts believe and try to make us believe, the only stimulus known for awakening the higher ranges of men's spiritual energy.
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Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.
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The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the science of ethics never made a man behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to behave wrongly and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes.
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To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being.
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Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.
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We want all our friends to tell us our bad qualities it is only the particular ass that does so whom we can't tolerate.
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
William James