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Every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

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
Individual
Every
Spasm
Shambles
Agony
Helpless
Lonely
Goes
Existence

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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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My experience is what I agree to attend to.
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... religious experience, as we have studied it, cannot be cited as unequivocally supporting the infinitist belief. The only thingthat it unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace.
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There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.
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To spend life for something which outlasts it.
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You make a great, very great mistake, if you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use.
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Life feels like a real fight - as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.
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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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Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life.
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The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons.
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There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.
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We can change our circumstances by a mere change of our attitude.
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How pleasant is the day when we give up striving to be young-or slender.
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Once a decision is reached, stop worrying and start working.
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You can alter your life by altering the state of your mind.
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The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
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Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
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Philosophy lives in words, but truth and fact well up into our lives in ways that exceed verbal formulation.
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Ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least.
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...as I apprehend the Buddhist doctrine of karma, I agree in principle with that.
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