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Conversion is in its essence a normal adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider intellectual and spiritual life of maturity.

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
Children
Phenomenon
Life
Essence
Incidental
Intellectual
Adolescent
Normal
Wider
Small
Conversion
Child
Passage
Spiritual
Passages
Universe
Maturity

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Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude.
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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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One of the greatest discoveries of our time is that a man can alter the state of their life by altering the state of their mind.
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To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
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In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.
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A good hypothesis in science must have other properties than those of the phenomenon it is immediately invoked to explain, otherwise it is not prolific enough.
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We are stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves.
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As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!
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First... a new theory is attacked as absurd then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.
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Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes spiritualism means theaffirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.
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We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort.
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Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
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The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist.
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Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.
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No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one has not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better.
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
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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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Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for is thrill and excitements. ... From time immemorial war has been ... the supremely thrilling excitement.
William James