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Our acts of voluntary attending, as brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower destinies.

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
Critical
Destinies
Destiny
Determining
Higher
Voluntary
Attending
Brief
Nevertheless
Lower
Fitful
Acts
Momentous

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It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all.
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The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
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You may not get everything you dream about, but you will never get anything you don't dream about.
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Our colleges ought to have lit up in us a lasting relish for a better kind of man, a loss of appetite for mediocrities.
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You can't out-perform your self-image.
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True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
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Strength is a facade for the proud, weakness is a mask for the lazy.
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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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A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
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Humanism . . . is not a single hypothesis or theorem, and it dwells on no new facts. It is rather a slow shifting in the philosophic perspective, making things appear as from a new centre of interest or point of sight.
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Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.
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