Book Quote by William James

“As a rule reading fiction is as hard to me as trying to hit a target by hurling feathers at it. I need resistance to celebrate!”

William James

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More by William James

Effort is the one strictly undervalued and original contribution we make to this world.

William James

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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…

William James

In the dim background of our mind we know meanwhile what we ought to be doing: getting up, dressing ourselves, answering the person who…

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 belief, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it…

William James

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

William James

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'Facts' are the bounds of human knowledge, set for it, not by it.

William James

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Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or…

William James

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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.

William James

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It is your friends who make your world.

William James

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Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

William James

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Most people, probably, are in doubt about certain matters ascribed to their past. They may have seen them, may have said them, done them,…

William James

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“How soon, indeed, are human things forgotten! As we meet here this morning, the Southern sun is shining on their place of burial, and the waves sparkling and the sea-gulls circling around Fort Wagner's ancient site. But the great earthworks and their thundering cannon, the commanders and their followers, the wild assault and repulse that for a brief space made…

William James

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If I had a dollar for every time I couldn’t sleep, I could buy a billion locks and finally read a book in peace.

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Young men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend “a course of reading.” Distrust a course of reading! People who…

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The Rosary is the book of the blind.

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I have many who keep me going, I am very fortunate in this sense. There is nothing like a child who knows more about…

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I think books in which people are really happy and things are going well are probably the most challenging novels there are to write,…

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It's like the query letter problem that I just mentioned, magnified a hundredfold. You might be good at telling a story, but that doesn't mean you know anything about marketing. Or layout. Or editing. Or publicity. Or selling your books for foreign markets.Everyone can point to a few examples of people that have done very well for themselves self-publishing. But…

Patrick Rothfuss