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The trail of the human serpent is thus over everything.

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
Thus
Human
Everything
Humans
Serpent
Trail
Trails

More quotes by William James

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You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action.
William James
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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
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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.
William James
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A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.
William James
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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.
William James
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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
William James
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What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the romances and the statues celebrate, and the grim civic monuments remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness with heroism reduced to its bare chance, yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death.
William James
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Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
William James
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A sense of humor is just common sense dancing.
William James
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The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
William James
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
William James
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For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
William James
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Procrastination is attitude's natural assassin. There's nothing so fatiguing as an uncompleted task
William James
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
William James
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Genius is the capacity for seeing relationships where lesser men see none.
William James
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Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.
William James
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Do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty.
William James
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Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.
William James
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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.
William James
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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
William James