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We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.

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
Proud
Example
Advising
Others
Shrink
Nature
Passionately
Human
Shrinks
Humans
Extreme
Extremes
Follow

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The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself to prompt new questions in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.
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If you want a quality, act as if you already had it.
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With mere good intentions hell is proverbially paved.
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I don't see how an epigram, being a bolt from the blue, with no introduction or cue, ever gets itself writ.
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When thoughts do not neutralize an undesirable emotion, action will.
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We hear in these days of scientific enlightenment a great deal of discussion about the efficacy of Prayer. Many reasons are given why we should not pray. Others give reasons why we should pray. Very little is said of the reason we do pray. The reason is simple: We pray because we cannot help praying.
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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.
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We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
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New habits can be launched.
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An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.
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Focus on increasing service. Becoming great where you are. Pile in the wood. The heat will follow.
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Belief is desecrated when given to unproved and unquestioned statements for the solace and private pleasure of the believer . . . It is wrong always, everywhere, and for every one, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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You do not sing because you're happy, you're happy because you sing.
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The first lecture in psychology that I ever heard was the first I ever gave.
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True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
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In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds of conception at a later age.
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Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance.
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It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
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Deepest principle of human nature is to be appreciated.
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In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who has spoken to us, trying to make the next step in our reasoning. But somehow we cannot start.
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