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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

William James

True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to ‘principles,’ and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.
WILLIAM JAMES

Habit Principles Thinking
The ultimate test of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires.
WILLIAM JAMES

Inspire Mean Truth
Our beliefs and our attention are the same fact.
WILLIAM JAMES

Attention Belief Facts
I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.
WILLIAM JAMES

Belief Believe Experience Lying
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

Islands Roots Sea Underground
To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
WILLIAM JAMES

Deny Neglect Wise
Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.
WILLIAM JAMES

Character Circumstances Enough Repeated
Religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a mountain gorge.
WILLIAM JAMES

Mountain Religious Twilight
Wisdom is learning what to overlook.
WILLIAM JAMES

Learning Philosophical Wisdom
We are proud of a human nature that could be so passionately extreme, but we shrink from advising others to follow the example.
WILLIAM JAMES

Example Human Nature Proud
Truth happens to an idea
WILLIAM JAMES

Happens Ideas Truth
As long as there are postmen, life will have zest.
WILLIAM JAMES

Expectations Long Zest
If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
WILLIAM JAMES

Alcohol Feel Feelings Good
Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis.
WILLIAM JAMES

Faith Hypothesis
Men habitually use only a small part of the power which they actually possess.
WILLIAM JAMES

Men Parts Small Use
There can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say.
WILLIAM JAMES

Finals Lasts Men

All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

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All natural happiness thus seems infected with a contradiction. The breath of the sepulchre surrounds it.

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