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

William James

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

Contribution Effort World
The aim of a college education is to teach you to know a good man when you see one.
WILLIAM JAMES

Die Education Philosophical
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.
WILLIAM JAMES

Intellectual Men Order
A man with no philosophy in him is the most inauspicious and unprofitable of all possible social mates.
WILLIAM JAMES

Men Philosophy Social
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.
WILLIAM JAMES

Law Science Together
The general law is that no mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.
WILLIAM JAMES

Law Medicine Philosophy
Owing to the fact that all experience is a process, no point of view can ever be the last one
WILLIAM JAMES

Owing Truth Views
To neglect the wise sayings of great thinkers is to deny ourselves the truest education.
WILLIAM JAMES

Deny Neglect Wise
To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.
WILLIAM JAMES

Abnormal Philosophical Understanding
It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.
WILLIAM JAMES

Believe Government Philosophical
Truth is something that happens to an idea.
WILLIAM JAMES

Happen Ideas Truth
Success plus Self-esteem equals Pretensions.
WILLIAM JAMES

Congratulations Self Esteem Success
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

Opposites Statement Truth
The difference between objective and subjective extension is one of relation to a context solely.
WILLIAM JAMES

Differences Extensions Relation
Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
WILLIAM JAMES

Clever Motivational Procrastination
The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
WILLIAM JAMES

Inspirational Life Motivational
There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference somewhere.
WILLIAM JAMES

Differences Making Somewhere
To some of us the thought of God is like a sort of quiet music playing in the background of the mind.
WILLIAM JAMES

Mind Philosophy Quiet
There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.
WILLIAM JAMES

Esteem Failure Inspirational Self
We may be in the Universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.
WILLIAM JAMES

Book Cat Conservations Dog
Man, whatever else he may be, is primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world’s life
WILLIAM JAMES

Educational Men Philosophy
Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.
WILLIAM JAMES

Creativity Mean Science
How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.
WILLIAM JAMES

Happiness Laughter Men
There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
WILLIAM JAMES

Inspirational Philosophical Sadness
That which is most personal, is most interesting.
WILLIAM JAMES

Interesting Most Personal
If merely ‘feeling good’ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.
WILLIAM JAMES

Alcohol Feel Feelings Good

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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