Quotes
Quotes about Habit
I could never think well of a man's intellectual or moral character, if he was habitually unfaithful to his appointments.
Promptitude is not only a duty, but is also a part of good manners; it is favorable to fortune, reputation, influence, and usefulness; a little attention and energy will form the habit, so as to make it easy and delightful.
As to virtue . . . it is an act of the will, a habit which increases the quantity, intensity and quality of life. It builds up, strengthens and vivifies personality.
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.
A soul without reflection, like a pile Without inhabitant, to ruin runs.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.
A habit of devout fellowship with God is the spring of all our life, and the strength of it.
Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.
In the firm expectation that when London shall be a habitation of bitterns, when St. Paul and Westminster Abbey shall stand shapeless and nameless ruins in the midst of an unpeopled marsh, when the piers of Waterloo Bridge shall become the nuclei of islets of reeds and osiers, and cast the jagged shadows of their broken arches on the solitary stream, some Transatlantic commentator will be weighing in the scales of some new and now unimagined system of criticism the respective merits of the Bells and the Fudges and their historians.
How use doth breed a habit in a man! -The Two Gentleman of Verona. Act v. Sc. 4.
The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life, Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, More moving-delicate and full of life Into the eye and prospect of his soul. -Much Ado about Nothing. Act iv. Sc. 1.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. Such tricks hath strong imagination, That if it would but apprehend some joy, It comprehends some bringer of that joy; Or in the night, imagining some fear, How easy is a bush supposed a bear! -A Midsummer Night's Dream. Act v. Sc. 1.
Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions: How he sware unto the Lord, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob; Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed; I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids, Until I find a place for the Lord, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
Some tribes [of monkeys] have taken to washing potatoes in the river before eating them, others have not. Sometimes migrating groups of potato-washers meet non-washers, and the two groups watch each other's strange behavior with apparent bewilderment. But unlike the inhabitants of Lilliput, who fought holy crusades over the question at which end to break the egg, the potato-washing monkeys do not go to war with the non-washers, because the poor creatures have no language which would enable them to declare washing a diving commandment and eating unwashed potatoes a deadly heresy.
General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming.
Every change in conditions will make necessary some change in the use of resources, in the direction and kind of human activities, in habits and practices. And each change in the actions of those affected in the first instance will require further adjustments that will gradually extend through the whole of society. Every change thus in a sense creates a "problem" for society, even though no single individual perceives it as such; it is gradually "solved" by the establishment of a new overall adjustment.
The soul, which is spirit, can not dwell in dust; it is carried along to dwell in the blood. [Lat., Anima certe, quia spiritus, in sicco habitare non potest; ideo in sanguine fertur habitare.]
To free the mind from the habit of competition, we must see in detail the process by which the mind is ensnared by competition.
Competition is a process or variety of habitual behavior that grows out of a habit of mind.
Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
Winning is not a sometime thing; itâs an all time thing. You donât win once in a while, you donât do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
The impenetrable stupidity of Prince George (son-in-law of James II) served his turn. It was his habit, when any news was told him, to exclaim, "Est il possible?"--"Is it possible?"
When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion, that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us.
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.
It is the habitual carriage of the umbrella that is the stamp of Respectability. The umbrella has become the acknowledged index of social position. . . . Crusoe was rather a moralist than a pietist, and his leaf-umbrella is as fine an example of the civilized mind striving to express itself under adverse circumstances as we have ever met with.
