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We With Our Lives Are Like Islands In The Sea, Or Like Trees In The Forest... But The Trees Also Commingle Their Roots In The Darkness Underground.
-William James
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We With Our Lives

William James
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We With Our Lives Are Like Islands In The Sea, Or Like Trees In The Forest... But The Trees Also Commingle Their Roots In The Darkness Underground.

Understanding the Quote: "we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like..."

This quote by William James reflects deeply on the theme of islands. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Islands, Sea, Roots, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how William James interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About William James

William James is celebrated for insightful thoughts on islands and sea. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Islands
Sea
Roots
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An Enormous Mass Of Experience, Both Of Homeopathic Doctors And Their Patients, Is Invoked In Favor Of The Efficacy Of These Remedies And Doses.
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The God Whom Science Recognizes Must Be A God Of Universal Laws Exclusively, A God Who Does A Wholesale, Not A Retail Business. He Cannot Accommodate His Processes To The Convenience Of Individuals.
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Wisdom Is Learning What To Overlook.
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At Bottom, The Whole Concern Of Religion Is With The Manner Of Our Acceptance Of The Universe.
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We Are Doomed To Cling To A Life Even While We Find It Unendurable.
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Our Errors Are Surely Not Such Awfully Solemn Things. In A World Where We Are So Certain To Incur Them In Spite Of All Our Caution, A Certain Lightness Of Heart Seems Healthier Than This Excessive Nervousness On Their Behalf.
Heart
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Never Suffer An Exception To Occur Till The New Habit Is Securely Rooted In Your Life. Each Lapse Is Like The Letting Fall Of A Ball Of String Which One Is Carefully Winding Up; A Single Slip Undoes More Than A Great Many Turns Will Wind Again.
Fall
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...by Far The Most Usual Way Of Handling Phenomena So Novel That They Would Make For A Serious Rearrangement Of Our Preconceptions Is To Ignore Them Altogether, Or To Abuse Those Who Bear Witness For Them.
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Essential Truth, The Truth Of The Intellectualists, The Truth With No One Thinking It, Is Like The Coat That Fits Tho No One Has Ever Tried It On, Like The Music That No Ear Has Listened To. It Is Less Real, Not More Real, Than The Verified Article; And To Attribute A Superior Degree Of Glory To It Seems Little More Than A Piece Of Perverse Abstraction-worship.
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The Difference Between The First And Second-best Things In Art Absolutely Seems To Escape Verbal Definition -- It Is A Matter Of A Hair, A Shade, An Inward Quiver Of Some Kind -- Yet What Miles Away In The Point Of Preciousness!
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Success Or Failure Depends More Upon Attitude Than Upon Capacity.
Attitude
Capacity
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So With The Man Who Has Daily Inured Himself To Habits Of Concentrated Attention, Energetic Volition, And Self-denial In Unnecessary Things. He Will Stand Like A Tower When Everything Rocks Around Him, And When His Softer Fellow-mortals Are Winnowed Like Chaff In The Blast.
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Since You Make Evil Or Good By Your Own Thoughts, It Is Your Ruling Of Your Thoughts Which Proves To Be Your Principal Concern.
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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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What Excites And Interests The Looker-on At Life, What The Romances And The Statues Celebrate, And The Grim Civic Monuments Remind Us Of, Is The Everlasting Battle Of The Powers Of Light With Those Of Darkness; With Heroism Reduced To Its Bare Chance, Yet Ever And Anon Snatching Victory From The Jaws Of Death.
Life
Death
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All Our Scientific And Philosophic Ideals Are Altars To Unknown Gods.
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I Don't Sing Because I'm Happy; I'm Happy Because I Sing.
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Organization And Method Mean Much, But Contagious Human Characters Mean More In A University.
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With Mere Good Intentions Hell Is Proverbially Paved.
Good Intentions
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The Study A Posteriori Of The Distribution Of Consciousness Shows It To Be Exactly Such As We Might Expect In An Organ Added For The Sake Of Steering A Nervous System Grown Too Complex To Regulate Itself.
Might
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We Do Not Sing Because We Are Happy, We Are Happy Because We Sing.
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Much Of What We Call Evil Is Due Entirely To The Way Men Take The Phenomenon. It Can So Often Be Converted Into A Bracing And Tonic Good By A Simple Change Of The Sufferer's Inner Attitude From One Of Fear To One Of Fight; Its String Can So Often Depart And Turn Into A Relish When, After Vainly Seeking To Shun It, We Agree To Face About And Bear It.
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Truth Lives, In Fact, For The Most Part On A Credit System. Our Thoughts And Beliefs Pass, So Long As Nothing Challenges Them, Just As Bank-notes Pass So Long As Nobody Refuses Them.
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When You Have Broken The Reality Into Concepts You Never Can Reconstruct It In Its Wholeness.
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The Pragmatist Turns Away From Abstraction And Insufficiency, From Verbal Solutions, From Bad A Priori Reasons, From Fixed Principles, Closed Systems, And Pretended Absolutes And Origins. He Turns Toward Concreteness And Adequacy, Towards Facts, Towards Action, And Towards Power.
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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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I Will Act As If I Do Make A Difference.
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When Once A Decision Is Reached And Execution Is The Order Of The Day, Dismiss Absolutely All Responsibility And Care About The Outcome.
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It Is Very Important That Teachers Should Realize The Importance Of Habit.
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There Is An Organic Affinity Between Joyousness And Tenderness, And Their Companionship In The Saintly Life Need In No Way Occasion Surprise.
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I Have Often Thought The Best Way To Define A Man's Character Would Be To Seek Out The Particular Mental Or Moral Attitude In Which, When It Comes Upon Him, He Felt Himself Most Deeply And Intensely Active And Alive. At Such Moments There Is A Voice Inside Which Speaks And Says: This Is The Real Me!.
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Give Up The Feeling Of Responsibility, Let Go Your Hold, Resign The Care Of Your Destiny To Higher Powers, Be Genuinely Indifferent As To What Becomes Of It All And You Will Find Not Only That You Gain A Perfect Inward Relief, But Often Also, In Addition, The Particular Goods You Sincerely Thought You Were Renouncing.
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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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There Is A Stream, A Succession Of States, Or Waves, Or Fields (or Whatever You Please To Call Them), Of Knowledge, Of Feeling, Of Desire, Of Deliberation, Etc., That Constantly Pass And Repass, And That Constitute Our Inner Life.
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Far From Being Antecedent Principles That Animate The Process, Law, Language, Truth Are But Abstract Names For Its Results.
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The Great Use Of Life Is To Spend It For Something That Will Outlast It." "this Life Is Worth Living, We Can Say, Since It Is What We Make It." "believe That Life Is Worth Living And Your Belief Will Help Create The Fact.
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You Must Bring Out Of Each Word Its Practical Cash-value, Set It At Work Within The Stream Of Your Experience.
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True Ideas Lead Us Into Useful Verbal And Conceptual Quarters As Well As Directly Up To Useful Sensible Termini. They Lead To Consistency, Stability And Flowing Human Intercourse.
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'pure Experience' Is The Name I Gave To The Immediate Flux Of Life Which Furnishes The Material To Our Later Reflection With Its Conceptual Categories.
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Our Beliefs And Our Attention Are The Same Fact.
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Pragmatism Asks Its Usual Question. "grant An Idea Or Belief To Be True," It Says, "what Concrete Difference Will Its Being True Make In Anyone's Actual Life? How Will The Truth Be Realized? What Experiences Will Be Different From Those Which Would Obtain If The Belief Were False? What, In Short, Is The Truth's Cash-value In Experiential Terms?
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One Of The Greatest Discoveries Of Our Time Is That A Man Can Alter The State Of Their Life By Altering The State Of Their Mind.
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The Most Immutable Barrier In Nature Is Between One Man's Thoughts And Another's.
Men
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So You See That The Process Of Education, Taken In A Large Way, May Be Described As Nothing But The Process Of Acquiring Ideas Or Conceptions, The Best Educated Mind Being The Mind Which Has The Largest Stock Of Them, Ready To Meet The Largest Possible Variety Of The Emergencies Of Life. The Lack Of Education Means Only The Failure To Have Acquired Them, And The Consequent Liability To Be 'floored' And 'rattled' In The Vicissitudes Of Experience.
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We Forget That Every Good That Is Worth Possessing Must Be Paid For In Strokes Of Daily Effort. We Postpone And Postpone Until Those Smiling Possibilities Are Dead... By Neglecting The Necessary Concrete Labor, By Sparing Ourselves The Little Daily Tax, We Are Positively Digging The Graves Of Our Higher Possibilities.
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Genius Is The Capacity For Seeing Relationships Where Lesser Men See None.
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Our Theories Are Wedged And Controlled As Nothing Else Is. Yet Sometimes Alternative Theoretic Formulas Are Equally Compatible With All The Truths We Know, And Then We Choose Between Them For Subjective Reasons. We Choose The Kind Of Theory To Which We Are Already Partial: We Follow 'elegenace' Or 'economy'
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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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The Belief In Free-will Is Not In The Least Incompatible With The Belief In Providence, Provided You Do Not Restrict The Providence To Fulminating Nothing But Fatal Decrees.
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Faith Means Belief In Something Concerning Which Doubt Is Still Theoretically Possible ... Faith Is The Readiness To Act In A Cause The Prosperous Issue Of Which Is Not Certified To Us In Advance.
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To Kill Time Is Not Murder, It's Suicide.
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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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The 'i Think' Which Kant Said Must Be Able To Accompany All My Objects, Is The 'i Breathe' Which Actually Does Accompany Them.
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To Improve The Golden Moment Of Opportunity, And Catch The Good That Is Within Our Reach, Is The Great Art Of Life.
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The Exercise Of Prayer, In Those Who Habitually Exert It, Must Be Regarded By Us Doctors As The Most Adequate And Normal Of All The Pacifiers Of The Mind And Calmers Of The Nerves.
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But Petitional Prayer Is Only One Department Of Prayer; And If We Take The Word In The Wider Sense As Meaning Every Kind Of Inward Communion Or Conversation With The Power Recognized As Divine, We Can Easily See That Scientific Criticism Leaves It Untouched. Prayer In This Wide Sense Is The Very Soul And Essence Of Religion.
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Be Patient And Sympathetic With The Type Of Mind That Cuts A Poor Figure In Examinations. It May, In The Long Examination Which Life Sets Us, Come Out In The End In Better Shape Than The Glib And Ready Reproducer, Its Passions Being Deeper, Its Purposes More Worthy, Its Combining Power Less Commonplace, And Its Total Mental Output Consequently More Important.
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Once A Decision Is Reached, Stop Worrying And Start Working.
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Truth Is Something That Happens To An Idea.
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An Idea, To Be Suggestive, Must Come To The Individual With The Force Of Revelation.
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Man Can Change His Life Simply By Changing His Attitude.
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If The Topic Be Highly Abstract, Show Its Nature By Concrete Examples. If It Be Unfamiliar, Trace Some Point Of Analogy In It With The Known. If It Be Inhuman, Make It Figure As Part Of A Story. If It Be Difficult, Couple Its Acquisition With Some Prospect Of Personal Gain. Above All Things, Make Sure That It Shall Run Through Certain Inner Changes, Since No Unvarying Object Can Possibly Hold The Mental Field For Long.
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Spiritual Energy Flows In And Produces Effects, Psychological Or Material, Within The Phenomenal World.
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The Mind Is Made Up By What It Feeds Upon.
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True Is The Name For Whatever Idea Starts The Verification Process, Useful Is The Name For Its Completed Function In Experience
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Lets Take Full Advantage Of This Discovery
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Habit Is The Enormous Flywheel Of Society, Its Most Precious Conservative Agent. There Is No More Miserable Human Being Than One In Whom Nothing Is Habitual But Indecision. Full Half The Time Of Such A Man Goes To The Deciding, Or Regretting, Of Matters Which Ought To Be So Ingrained In Him As Practically Not To Exist For His Consciousness At All.
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You Perceive Now, My Friends, What Your General Or Abstract Duty Is As Teachers. Although You Have To Generate In Your Pupils A Large Stock Of Ideas, Any One Of Which May Be Inhibitory, Yet You Must Also See To It That No Habitual Hesitancy Or Paralysis Of The Will Ensues, And That The Pupil Still Retains His Power Of Vigorous Action.
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Good-humor Is A Philosophic State Of Mind; It Seems To Say To Nature That We Take Her No More Seriously Than She Takes Us. I Maintain That One Should Always Talk Of Philosophy With A Smile.
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The Perfect Stillness Of The Night Was Thrilled By A More Solemn Silence. The Darkness Held A Presence That Was All The More Felt Because It Was Not Seen. I Could Not Any More Have Doubted That He Was There Than That I Was. Indeed, I Felt Myself To Be, If Possible, The Less Real Of The Two.
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Two
To Be Conscious Means Not Simply To Be, But To Be Reported, Known, To Have Awareness Of One's Being Added To That Being.
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How Many Of Us Persist In A Precipitate Course Which, But For A Moment Of Heedlessness We Might Never Have Entered Upon, Simply Because We Hate To Change Our Minds.
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I Do Indeed Disbelieve That We Or Any Other Mortal Men Can Attain On A Given Day To Absolutely Incorrigible And Unimprovable Truth About Such Matters Of Fact As Those With Which Religions Deal. But I Reject This Dogmatic Ideal Not Out Of A Perverse Delight In Intellectual Instability. I Am No Lover Of Disorder And Doubt As Such. Rather Do I Fear To Lose Truth By This Pretension To Possess It Already Wholly.
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Keep The Faculty Of Effort Alive In You By A Little Gratuitous Exercise Every Day.
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If This Life Is Not A Real Fight, In Which Something Is Eternally Gained For The Universe By Success, It Is No Better Than A Game Of Private Theatricals From Which One May Withdraw At Will. But It Feels Like A Real Fight.
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Every Claim Creates An Obligation.
Claims
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Philosophy Is At Once The Most Sublime And The Most Trivial Of Human Pursuits.
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When You Have To Make A Choice And Don't Make It, That Is In Itself A Choice.
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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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The Greatest Discovery Of The 19th Century Was Not In The Realm Of The Physical Sciences, But The Power Of The Subconscious Mind Touched By Faith. Any Individual Can Tap Into An Eternal Reservoir Of Power That Will Enable Them To Overcome Any Problem That May Arise. All Weaknesses Can Be Overcome, Bodily Healing, Financial Independence, Spiritual Awakening, And Prosperity Beyond Your Wildest Dreams. This Is The Superstructure Of Happiness.
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What Holds Attention Determines Action.
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Action
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The Good We Do Today Becomes The Happiness Of Tomorrow.
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Today
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The Most Natively Interesting Object To A Man Is His Own Personal Self And Its Fortunes. We Accordingly See That The Moment A Thing Becomes Connected With The Fortunes Of The Self, It Forthwith Becomes An Interesting Thing.
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Everybody Should Do At Least Two Things Each Day That He Hates To Do, Just For Practice.
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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.
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That Which Is Most Personal, Is Most Interesting.
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History Is A Bath Of Blood.
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Give Your Dreams All You've Got, And You'll Be Amazed At The Energy That Comes Out Of You.
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... I Am The Same Personal Being Who In Old Times Upon The Earth Had Those Experiences.
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I Am No Lover Of Disorder And Doubt As Such. Rather Do I Fear To Lose Truth By This Pretension To Possess It Already Wholly.
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If You Only Care Enough For A Result, You Will Almost Certainly Attain It. Only You Must, Then, Really Wish These Things, And Wish Them Exclusively, And Not Wish At The Same Time A Hundred Other Incompatible Things Just As Strongly.
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Hardly Ever Can A Youth Transferred To The Society Of His Betters Unlearn The Nasality And Other Vices Of Speech Bred In Him By The Associations Of His Growing Years. Hardly Ever, Indeed, No Matter How Much Money There Be In His Pocket, Can He Ever Learn To Dress Like A Gentleman-born. The Merchants Offer Their Wares As Eagerly To Him As To The Veriest Swell, But He Simply Cannot Buy The Right Things.
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Sobriety Diminishes, Discriminates, And Says No; Drunkenness Expands, Unites, And Says Yes. Not Through Mere Perversity Do Men Run After It.
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Men
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The Deepest Principle In Human Nature Is The Craving To Be Appreciated.
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It Seems The Natural Thing For Us To Listen Whilst The Europeans Talk.
Political
Politics
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All Natural Goods Perish. Riches Take Wings; Fame Is A Breath; Love Is A Cheat; Youth And Health And Pleasure Vanish.
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Lives Based On Having Are Less Free Than Lives Based Either On Doing Or Being.
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Circumstance Does Not Make Me, It Reveals Me.
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The Thinker Philosophizes As The Lover Loves. Even Were The Consequences Not Only Useless But Harmful, He Must Obey His Impulse.
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The Word 'cause' Is An Altar To An Unknown God.
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Altars
Selection Is The Very Keel On Which Our Mental Ship Is Built. And In This Case Of Memory Its Utility Is Obvious. If We Remembered Everything, We Should On Most Occasions Be As Ill Off As If We Remembered Nothing.
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Tell Him To Live By Yes And No - Yes To Everything Good, No To Everything Bad.
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Live By
In The Deepest Heart Of All Of Us There Is A Corner In Which The Ultimate Mystery Of Things Works Sadly.
Heart
Mystery
Corners
The Power To Move The World Is In The Subconcious Mind
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Mind
World
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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Simple
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Common Sense And A Sense Of Humor Are The Same Thing, Moving At Different Speeds. A Sense Of Humor Is Just Common Sense, Dancing.
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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.
Happiness
Sadness
Reality
A Chain Is No Stronger Than Its Weakest Link, And Life Is After All A Chain.
Life
Stay Strong
Ties
Intellectualism' Is The Belief That Our Mind Comes Upon A World Complete In Itself, And Has The Duty Of Ascertaining Its Contents; But Has No Power Of Re-determining Its Character, For That Is Already Given.
Character
Mind
World
Whenever Two People Meet, There Are Really Six People Present. There Is Each Man As He Sees Himself, Each Man As The Other Person Sees Him, And Each Man As He Really Is.
Teamwork
Men
Two
Beyond The Very Extreme Of Fatigue And Distress, We May Find Amounts Of Ease And Power We Never Dreamed Ourselves To Own; Sources Of Strength Never Taxed At All Because We Never Push Through The Obstruction
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May
Born To Run
Science, Like Life, Feeds On Its Own Decay. New Facts Burst Old Rules; Then Newly Divined Conceptions Bind Old And New Together Into A Reconciling Law.
Science
Law
Together
A Difference Which Makes No Difference Is No Difference At All.
Differences
[pragmatism's] Only Test Of Probable Truth Is What Works Best In The Way Of Leading Us, What Fits Every Part Of Life Best And Combines With The Collectivity Of Experience's Demands, Nothing Being Omitted.
Truth
Demand
Tests
Romeo Wants Juliet As The Filings Want The Magnet; And If No Obstacles Intervene He Moves Towards Her By As Straight A Line As They. But Romeo And Juliet, If A Wall Be Built Between Them, Do Not Remain Idiotically Pressing Their Faces Against Its Opposite Sides Like The Magnet And The Filings With The Card. Romeo Soon Finds A Circuitous Way, By Scaling The Wall Or Otherwise, Of Touching Juliet's Lips Directly. With The Filings The Path Is Fixed; Whether It Reaches The End Depends On Accidents. With The Lover It Is The End Which Is Fixed, The Path May Be Modified Indefinitely.
Life
Wall
Moving
Great Indeed Is Fear; But It Is Not, As Our Military Enthusiasts Believe And Try To Make Us Believe, The Only Stimulus Known For Awakening The Higher Ranges Of Men's Spiritual Energy.
Spiritual
Military
Believe
The Greatest Revolution Of Our Generation Is The Discovery That Human Beings, By Changing The Inner Attitudes Of Their Minds, Can Change The Outer Aspects Of Their Lives.
Life
Change
Positive
We Are All Potentially Such Sick Men. The Sanest And Best Of Us Are Of One Clay With Lunatics And Prison-inmates. And Whenever We Feel This, Such A Sense Of The Vanity Of Our Voluntary Career Comes Over Us, That All Our Morality Appears But As A Plaster Hiding A Sore It Can Never Cure, And All Our Well-doing As The Hollowest Substitute For That Well-being That Our Lives Ought To Be Grounded In, But Alas! Are Not.
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Men
Vanity
Conversion Is In Its Essence A Normal Adolescent Phenomenon, Incidental To The Passage From The Child's Small Universe To The Wider Intellectual And Spiritual Life Of Maturity.
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Children
Maturity
Life Is One Long Struggle Between Conclusions Based On Abstract Ways Of Conceiving Cases, And Opposite Conclusions Prompted By Our Instinctive Perception Of Them.
Respect
Struggle
Adversity
Man, Biologically Considered ... Is Simply The Most Formidable Of All Beasts Of Prey, And, Indeed, The Only One That Preys Systematically On Its Own Kind.
Men
Kind
Beast
Seek Out That Particular Mental Attribute Which Makes You Feel Most Deeply And Vitally Alive.
Attitude
Alive
Authenticity
Invention, Using The Term Most Broadly, And Imitation, Are The Two Legs, So To Call Them, On Which The Human Race Historically Has Walked.
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Two
Legs
A New Opinion Counts As True Just In Proportion As It Gratifies The Individual's Desire To Assimilate The Novel In His Experience To His Beliefs In Stock
Truth
Desire
Belief
Our Volitional Habits Depend, Then, First, On What The Stock Of Ideas Is Which We Have; And, Second, On The Habitual Coupling Of The Several Ideas With Action Or Inaction Respectively.
Philosophy
Educational
Ideas
Just For Today I Will Exercise My Soul In Three Ways: I Will Do Somebody A Good Turn And Not Get Found Out. I Will Do At Least Two Things I Don't Want To Do
Inspiration
Exercise
Two
Any Object Not Interesting In Itself May Become Interesting Through Becoming Associated With An Object In Which An Interest Already Exists. The Two Associated Objects Grow, As It Were, Together; The Interesting Portion Sheds Its Quality Over The Whole; And Thus Things Not Interesting In Their Own Right Borrow An Interest Which Becomes As Real And As Strong As That Of Any Natively Interesting Thing.
Strong
Real
Educational
What A Magnificent Land And Race Is This Britain! Everything About Them Is Of Better Quality Than The Corresponding Thing In The U.s.... Yet I Believe (or Suspect) That Ours Is Eventually The Bigger Destiny, If We Can Only Succeed In Living Up To It.
Believe
Destiny
Race
The Aim Of A College Education Is To Teach You To Know A Good Man When You See One.
Education
Philosophical
Carpe Diem
Individuality Is Founded In Feeling
Inspirational
Feelings
Individuality
The War-function Has Grasped Us So Far; But The Constructive Interests May Some Day Seem No Less Imperative, And Impose On The Individual A Hardly Lighter Burden.
War
May
Individual
I Know That You, Ladies And Gentlemen, Have A Philosophy, Each And All Of You, And That The Most Interesting And Important Thing About You Is The Way In Which It Determines The Perspective In Your Several Worlds.
Philosophy
Interesting
Perspective
Those Thoughts Are Truth Which Guide Us To Beneficial Interaction With Sensible Particulars As They Occur, Whether They Copy These In Advance Or Not.
Truth
Guides
Sensible
Knowledge About Life Is One Thing; Effective Occupation Of A Place In Life, With Its Dynamic Currents Passing Through Your Being, Is Another.
Knowledge
Occupation
Life Is
The Desire To Gain Wealth And The Fear To Lose It Are Our Chief Breeders Of Cowardice And Propagators Of Corruption.
Desire
Gains
Wealth
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.
Uprising
Agents
Wheels
I Myself Believe That The Evidence For God Lies Primarily In Inner Personal Experiences.
Lying
Believe
Belief
The Trail Of The Human Serpent Is Thus Over Everything.
Trails
Serpent
Humans
What Do Believers In The Absolute Mean By Saving That Their Belief Affords Them Comfort? They Mean That Since In The Absolute Finite Evil Is ‘overruled’ Already, We May, Therefore, Whenever We Wish, Treat The Temporal As If It Were Potentially The Eternal, Be Sure That We Can Trust Its Outcome, And, Without Sin, Dismiss Our Fear And Drop The Worry Of Our Finite Responsibility. In Short, They Mean That We Have A Right Ever And Anon To Take A Moral Holiday, To Let The World Wag In Its Own Way, Feeling That Its Issues Are In Better Hands Than Ours And Are None Of Our Business.
Holiday
Mean
Responsibility
It Makes A Tremendous Emotional And Practical Difference To One Whether One Accepts The Universe In The Drab Discolored Way Of Stoic Resignation To Necessity, Or With The Passionate Happiness Of Christian Saints.
Christian
Emotional
Differences
All That We Need Explicitly To Note Is That, The More The Passive Attention Is Relied On, By Keeping The Material Interesting; And The Less The Kind Of Attention Requiring Effort Is Appealed To; The More Smoothly And Pleasantly The Classroom Work Goes On.
Philosophy
Educational
Interesting
There Must Be Something Solemn, Serious, And Tender About Any Attitude Which We Denominate Religious. If Glad, It Must Not Grin Or Snicker; If Sad, It Must Not Scream Or Curse.
Religious
Attitude
Snickers
Men's Activities Are Occupied Into Ways -- In Grappling With External Circumstances And In Striving To Set Things At One In Their Own Topsy-turvy Mind.
Men
Mind
Way
How Pleasant Is The Day When We Give Up Striving To Be Young-or Slender.
Giving Up
Age
Aging
Despair Lames Most People, But It Wakes Others Fully Up.
People
Despair
The One Who Thinks Over His Experiences Most, And Weaves Them Into Systematic Relations With Each Other, Will Be The One With The Best Memory.
Memories
Thinking
Experience
To Know Psychology, Therefore, Is Absolutely No Guarantee That We Shall Be Good Teacher.
Teacher
Educational
Philosophy
The Deepest Hunger In Human Beings Is The Desire To Be Appreciated.
Friendship
Desire
Appreciated
To Consider Hypotheses Is Surely Always Better Than To Dogmatize Ins Blaue Hinein
Truth
Hypothesis
There Is But One Cause Of Human Failure. And That Is Man's Lack Of Faith In His True Self.
Inspirational
Self Esteem
Failure
All Natural Happiness Thus Seems Infected With A Contradiction. The Breath Of The Sepulchre Surrounds It.
Happiness
Contradiction
Natural
This Life Is Worth Living, We Can Say, Since It Is What We Make It.
Life
Inspiration
Purpose
In All Primary School Work The Principle Of Multiple Impressions Is Well Recognized.
Philosophy
Educational
School
Truth Lives, In Fact, For The Most Part On A Credit System
Truth
Credit
Facts
We All Have A Lifelong Habit Of Inferiority To Our Full Self..."
Self
Inferiority
Habit
Habit Is The Great Flywheel Of Society.
Habit
Strength Is A Facade For The Proud, Weakness Is A Mask For The Lazy.
Lazy
Weakness
Proud
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.
Real
Fire
Water
When Two Minds Of A High Order, Interested In Kindred Subjects, Come Together, Their Conversation Is Chiefly Remarkable For The Summariness Of Its Allusions And The Rapidity Of Its Transitions. Before One Of Them Is Half Through A Sentence The Other Knows His Meaning And Replies. ... His Mental Lungs Breathe More Deeply, In An Atmosphere More Broad And Vast.
Science
Order
Two
Events Are Influenced By Our Very Great Desires.
Desire
Events
We Are Spinning Our Own Fates, Good Or Evil, And Never To Be Undone. Every Smallest Stroke Of Virtue Or Of Vice Leaves Its Never So Little Scar. ...nothing We Ever Do Is, In Strict Scientific Literalness, Wiped Out.
Character
Fate
Evil
The Deepest Human Need Is The Need To Be Appreciated.
Needs
Appreciated
Humans
It Would Probably Astound Each Of Them Beyond Measure To Be Let Into His Neighbor's Mind And To Find How Different The Scenery There Was From That In His Own.
Mind
Different
Neighbor
Our Acts Of Voluntary Attending, As Brief And Fitful As They Are, Are Nevertheless Momentous And Critical, Determining Us, As They Do, To Higher Or Lower Destinies.
Destiny
Higher
Critical
Round About The Accredited And Orderly Facts Of Every Science There Ever Floats A Sort Of Dust-cloud Of Exceptional Observations, Of Occurrences Minute And Irregular And Seldom Met With, Which It Always Proves More Easy To Ignore Than To Attend To... Anyone Will Renovate His Science Who Will Steadily Look After The Irregular Phenomena, And When Science Is Renewed, Its New Formulas Often Have More Of The Voice Of The Exceptions In Them Than Of What Were Supposed To Be The Rules.
Science
Dust
Voice
Each Of Us Is In Fact What He Is Almost Exclusively By Virtue Of His Imitative-ness.
Role Models
Facts
Virtue
To Neglect The Wise Sayings Of Great Thinkers Is To Deny Ourselves The Truest Education.
Wise
Neglect
Deny
Science Herself Consults Her Heart When She Lays It Down That The Infinite Ascertainment Of Fact And Correction Of False Belief Are The Supreme Goods For Man.
Heart
Science
Men
Truth Happens To An Idea
Truth
Ideas
Happens
In Order To Disprove The Assertion That All Crows Are Black, One White Crow Is Sufficient.
Order
White
Black
It Is Well For The World That In Most Of Us, By The Age Of Thirty, The Character Has Set Like Plaster, And Will Never Soften Again.
Birthday
Character
Age
Belief Creates The Actual Fact.
Inspirational
Uplifting
Philosophical
The Science Of Logic Never Made A Man Reason Rightly, And The Science Of Ethics Never Made A Man Behave Rightly. The Most Such Sciences Can Do Is To Help Us To Catch Ourselves Up And Check Ourselves, If We Start To Reason Or To Behave Wrongly; And To Criticise Ourselves More Articulately After We Have Made Mistakes.
Art
Mistake
Teaching
The Great Use Of Life Is To Spend It For Something That Will Outlast It.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
Cramming Seeks To Stamp Things In By Intense Application Immediately Before The Ordeal. But A Thing Thus Learned Can Form But Few Associations.
Teaching
Learning
Association
The Instinct Of Ownership Is Fundamental In Man's Nature.
Wisdom
Men
Rights
The Function Of Ignoring, Of Inattention, Is As Vital A Factor In Mental Progress As The Function Of Attention Itself.
Science
Mind
Progress
Impulse Without Reason Is Enough, And Reason Without Impulse Is A Poor Makeshift.
Reason
Enough
Poor
If Things Are Ever To Move Upward, Some One Must Take The First Step, And Assume The Risk Of It. No One Who Is Not Willing To Try Charity, To Try Non-resistance As The Saint Is Always Willing, Can Tell Whether These Methods Will Or Will Not Succeed.
Moving
Risk
Trying
Success Or Failure Depends More Upon Attitude Than Upon Capacity Successful Men Act As Though They Have Accomplished Or Are Enjoying Something. Soon It Becomes A Reality. Act, Look, Feel Successful, Conduct Yourself Accordingly, And You Will Be Amazed At The Positive Results.
Positive
Success
Attitude
We With Our Lives Are Like Islands In The Sea... The Islands Also Hang Together Through The Ocean's Bottom.
Love
Islands
Sea
From All These Facts There Emerges A Very Simple Abstract Program For The Teacher To Follow In Keeping The Attention Of The Child: Begin With The Line Of His Native Interests, And Offer Him Objects That Have Some Immediate Connection With These.
Teacher
Children
Philosophy
The Hell To Be Endured Hereafter, Of Which Theology Tells, Is No Worse Than The Hell We Make For Ourselves In This World By Habitually Fashioned Our Characters In The Wrong Way.
Life
Success
Character
The War For Our Union, With All The Constitutional Issues Which It Settled, And All The Military Lessons Which It Gathered In, Has Throughout Its Dilatory Length But One Meaning In The Eyes Of History. It Freed The Country From The Social Plague Which Until Then Had Made Political Development Impossible In The United States. More And More, As The Years Pass, Does The Meaning Stand Forth As The Sole Meaning.
Country
War
Military
We Are Spinning Our Own Fates, Good Or Evil, Never To Be Undone.
Fate
Evil
Spinning
We Are Proud Of A Human Nature That Could Be So Passionately Extreme, But We Shrink From Advising Others To Follow The Example.
Example
Proud
Human Nature
We With Our Lives Are Like Islands In The Sea, Or Like Trees In The Forest... But The Trees Also Commingle Their Roots In The Darkness Underground.
Islands
Sea
Roots
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