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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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William James
Age: 68 †
Born: 1842
Born: January 11
Died: 1910
Died: August 26
Philosopher
Physician
Psychologist
University Teacher
W. James
Earth
Reincarnation
Experiences
Personal
Upon
Times

More quotes by William James

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Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!
William James
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I am, myself, a very poor visualizer and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall leave any distinctness at all.
William James
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The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.
William James
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Our intelligence cannot wall itself up alive, like a pupa in a chrysalis. It must at any cost keep on speaking terms with the universe that engendered it.
William James
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A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
William James
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Genius... means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
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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Truth is something that happens to an idea.
William James
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No living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody.
William James
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An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to waste. It is physiologically incomplete... Its motor consequences are what clinch it.
William James
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The only function that one experience can perform is to lead into another experience and the only fulfillment we can speak of isthe reaching of a certain experienced end. When one experience leads to (or can lead to) the same end as another, they agree in function.
William James
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Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.
William James
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Millions of items in the outward order are present to my senses which never properly enter into my experience. Why? Because they have no interest for me. My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind --without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.
William James
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
William James
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But it is the bane of psychology to suppose that where results are similar, processes must be the same. Psychologists are too apt to reason as geometers would, if the latter were to say that the diameter of a circle is the same thing as its semi-circumference, because, forsooth, they terminate in the same two points.
William James
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The sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
William James
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Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.
William James
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We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can...in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life.
William James
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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them, or they may only have dreamed or imagined they did so.
William James
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As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James