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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
Pain
Energy
Means
Live
Mean
Earnestness
Willingness
Bring
Though

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For I had often said that the best argument I knew for an immortal life was the existence of a man who deserved one as well as Child did.
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There is a voice inside which speaks and says, This is the real me!
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A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.
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The university most worthy of rational admiration is that one in which your lonely thinker can feel himself lonely, most positively furthered, and most richly fed
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The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
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Asceticism may be a mere expression of organic hardihood, disgusted with too much ease.
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Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
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Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
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Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling.
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A great idea goes through three stages on its way to acceptance: 1) it is dismissed as nonsense, 2) it is acknowledged as true, but insignificant, 3) finally, it is seen to be important, but not really anything new.
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Just for today I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. I will do at least two things I don't want to do
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Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon 's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.
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True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas that therefore is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as.
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So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
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Modern man . . . has not ceased to be credulous . . . the need to believe haunts him.
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The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.
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We do not sing because we are happy, we are happy because we sing.
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Once you accept an idea, it's an idea whose time has come.
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Give your dreams all you've got, and you'll be amazed at the energy that comes out of you.
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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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