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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

William James

I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is profitable to our lives
WILLIAM JAMES

Believe Ideas Truth
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
WILLIAM JAMES

Community Friendship Sympathy
If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
WILLIAM JAMES

Alcohol Feel Feelings Good
We hear the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read in the bystander’s eyes the success or failure of our conduct.
WILLIAM JAMES

Bystanders Eye Teaching
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
WILLIAM JAMES

Inspirational Motivational Positive
The education of attention would be an education par excellence
WILLIAM JAMES

Attention Education Excellence
Real culture lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and disdains; under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerringly upon the human core.
WILLIAM JAMES

Culture Life Real
What would be better for us to believe!’ This sounds very like a definition of truth
WILLIAM JAMES

Believe Sound Truth
The question of free will is insoluble on strictly psychological grounds.
WILLIAM JAMES

Free Will Psychological
So our self-feeling in this world depends entirely on what we back ourselves to be and do.
WILLIAM JAMES

Feelings Self World
Footnotes — little dogs yapping at the heels of the text
WILLIAM JAMES

Dog Littles Writing
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.
WILLIAM JAMES

Agents Ordinance Uprising Wheels
Where quality is the thing sought after, the thing of supreme quality is cheap, whatever the price one has to pay for it.
WILLIAM JAMES

Pay Quality Supreme
Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.
WILLIAM JAMES

Humorous Life Philosophical
Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive.
WILLIAM JAMES

Alive Attitude Authenticity
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.
WILLIAM JAMES

Men Mind Way

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

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