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Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits. It works in the minutest crannies and it opens outthe widest vistas. It 'bakes no bread', as has been said, but it can inspire our souls with courage.

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
Human
Pursuit
Minutest
Humans
Souls
Widest
Bread
Vistas
Inspire
Pursuits
Works
Trivial
Courage
Opens
Philosophy
Sublime
Bakes
Soul
Philosophical
Crannies

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It is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit.
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
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The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.
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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.
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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.
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Our theories are wedged and controlled as nothing else is. Yet sometimes alternative theoretic formulas are equally compatible with all the truths we know, and then we choose between them for subjective reasons. We choose the kind of theory to which we are already partial: we follow 'elegenace' or 'economy'
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If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.
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Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
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... no bell in us tolls to let us know for certain when truth is in our grasp.
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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.
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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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Language is the most imperfect and expensive means yet discovered for communicating thought.
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If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.
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The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.
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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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In order to disprove the assertion that all crows are black, one white crow is sufficient.
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The emotions aren't always immediately subject to reason, but they are always immediately subject to action.
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
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Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day.
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