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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.

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
Altering
Alter
State
States
Mind
Life

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Geniuses are commonly believed to excel other men in their power of sustained attention . . . But it is their genius making them attentive, not their attention making geniuses of them.
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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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Why may we not be in the universe, as our dogs and cats are in our drawingrooms and libraries?
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There is but one unconditional commandment ... to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see.
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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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Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
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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.
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Theory must mediate between all previous truths and certain new experiences
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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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We don't laugh because we're happy - we're happy because we laugh.
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The work that leads to a doctor's degree is a constant temptation to sacrifice one's growth as a man to one's growth as a specialist.
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What a teacher needs to know about psychology might almost be written on the palm of one's hand.
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Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge.
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No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed.
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One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling.
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How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
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A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
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Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form but few associations.
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To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.
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When a superior intellect and a psychopathic temperament coalesce in the same individual, we have the best possible condition for the kind of effective genius that gets into the biographical dictionaries.
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