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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
Shambles
Agony
Helpless
Lonely
Goes
Existence
Individual
Every
Spasm

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The true'to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.
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Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract
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Experience, as we know, has a way of boiling over, and making us correct our present formulas.
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The man whose acquisitions stick is the man who is always achieving and advancing whilst his neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own.
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Mental fire is what won't burn real sticks mental water is what won't necessarily (though of course it may) put out even a mentalfire.
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The states of consciousness are all that psychology needs to do her work with. Metaphysics or theology may prove the Soul to exist but for psychology the hypothesis of such a substantial principle of unity is superfluous.
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The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
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It seems the natural thing for us to listen whilst the Europeans talk.
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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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Few people have definitely articulated philosophies of their own. But almost everyone has his own peculiar sense of a certain total character in the universe, and of the inadequacy of fully to match it [to] the peculiar systems that he knows.
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Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.
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The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour.
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Smitten as we are with the vision of social righteousness, a God indifferent to everything but adulation, and full of partiality for his individual favorites, lacks an essential element of largeness.
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Knowledge about life is one thing effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
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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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The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.
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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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The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old.
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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.
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We all have a lifelong habit of inferiority to our full self...
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