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We and God have business with each other, and in opening ourselves to God's influence our deepest destiny is fulfilled.

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
Fulfilled
Deepest
Opening
Destiny
Influence
Business

More quotes by William James

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We must not just patch and tinker with life. We must keep renewing it. Embrace novelty and uniqueness.
William James
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The deepest longing in the human breast is the desire for appreciation.
William James
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To know an object is to lead to it through a context which the world provides
William James
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In this real world of sweat and dirt, it seems to me that when a view of things is 'noble,' that ought to count as presumption against its truth, and as a philosophic disqualification. The prince of darkness may be a gentleman, as we are told he is, but whatever the God of earth and heaven is, he can surely be no gentleman.
William James
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We divert our attention from disease and death as much as we can the slaughterhouses are huddled out of sight and never mentioned, so that the world we recognize officially in literature and in society is a poetic fiction far handsomer, cleaner and better than the world that really is.
William James
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Hogamus, higamous Man is polygamous Higamus, hogamous Woman monogamous.
William James
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Our minds thus grow in spots and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in it stains the ancient mass but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.
William James
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Touch is the alpha and omega of affection.
William James
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Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed. which give happiness. Thomas Jefferson We never enjoy perfect happiness our most fortunate successes are mingled with sadness some anxieties always perplex the reality of our satisfaction.
William James
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We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition
William James
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Lives based on having are less free than lives based either on doing or being.
William James
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Events are influenced by our very great desires.
William James
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Faith branches off the highroad before reason begins
William James
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Since belief is measured by action, he who forbids us to believe religion to be true, necessarily also forbids us to act as we should if we did believe it to be true.
William James
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Individuality is founded in feeling and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.
William James
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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.
William James
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To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else's type of thinking.
William James
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The impulse to take life strivingly is indestructible in the race.
William James
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Habit is a second nature, or rather, it is 'ten times nature'.
William James
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There can be no existence of evil as a force to the healthy-minded individual.
William James