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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries

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
Men
Cries
Cry
Doe

More quotes by William James

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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.
William James
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The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stoodthere from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
William James
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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.
William James
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Each of us literally chooses, by his way of attending to things, what sort of universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.
William James
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The perfection of rottenness.
William James
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Philosophy is an unusually stubborn attempt to think clearly.
William James
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If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.
William James
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O my Bergson, you are a magician, and your book is a marvel, a real wonder in the history of philosophy . . . In finishing it I found . . . such a flavor of persistent euphony, as of a rich river that never foamed or ran thin, but steadily and firmly proceeded with its banks full to the brim.
William James
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
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This overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed.
William James
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I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
William James
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The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.
William James
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We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, never to be undone.
William James
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Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.
William James
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... I am the same personal being who in old times upon the Earth had those experiences.
William James
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
William James
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To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.
William James
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Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
William James
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
William James
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We with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground.
William James