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Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain.

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
Energy
Means
Live
Mean
Earnestness
Willingness
Bring
Though
Pain

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The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
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The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
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A man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognize him.
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Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being.
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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.
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Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.
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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.
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Science as such assuredly has no authority, for she can only say what is, not what is not.
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Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience
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Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
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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.
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If you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain it. Only you must, then, really wish these things, and wish them exclusively, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.
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The drunken consciousness is one bit of the mystic consciousness, and our total opinion of it must find its place in our opinion of that larger whole.
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a man does not cry because he is sad, he is sad because he cries
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
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No decision is, in itself, a decision.
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... if we take the universe of 'fitting,' countless coats 'fit' backs, and countless boots 'fit' feet, on which they are not practically fitted countless stones 'fit' gaps in walls into which no one seeks to fit them actually. In the same way countless opinions 'fit' realities, and countless truths are valid, tho no thinker ever thinks them.
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In the matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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If this life is not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.
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Let everything you do be done as if it makes a difference.
William James