Quote

Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.

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
Courses
Course
Though
Water
Burn
May
Sticks
Real
Necessarily
Even
Mental
Fire

More quotes by William James

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All that we need explicitly to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by keeping the material interesting and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on.
William James
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I wished by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her become one.
William James
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Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
William James
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We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
William James
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The attitude of unhappiness is not only painful, it is mean and ugly.
William James
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No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative expression, -this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget.
William James
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...By far the most usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear witness for them.
William James
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You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
William James
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If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
William James
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What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise although the philosophers generally call it recognition!
William James
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Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw. We feel and act about certain things that are ours very much as we feel and act about ourselves.
William James
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In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible.
William James
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The essence of genius is to know what to overlook.
William James
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
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Effort is a measure of a Man.
William James
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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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If the grace of God miraculously operates, it probably operates through the subliminal door.
William James
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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
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Man can change his life simply by changing his attitude.
William James