Selected habit quotes

1. I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

2. For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

3. The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

4. Sooner or later, I'll be punctual.

5. I didn't mind being a public executioner, once I got the hang of it.

6. If coffee didn't exist, somebody would have to invent it for me very soon.

7. I am irrevocably committed to being permanently indecisive.

8. The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.

9. They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

10. Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

11. Choose the life that is noblest, for custom can make it sweet to thee.

12. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

13. First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

14. A master passion is the love of news.

15. He tried the luxury of doing good.

16. Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.

17. A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he's not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.

18. As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.

19. Good character is not formed in a week or a month. It is created little by little, day by day. Protracted and patient effort is needed to develop good character.

20. To do the same thing over and over again is not only boredom: it is to be controlled by rather than to control what you do.

21. There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

22. When the dog is repeatedly teased with the sight of objects inducing salivary secretion from a distance, the reaction of the salivary glands grows weaker and weaker and finally drops to zero.

23. I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

24. It is curious how tyrannical the habit of reading is, and what shifts we make to escape thinking. There is no bore we dread being left alone with so much as our own minds.

25. Why do people build houses to keep the climate out, then cut holes in the walls to let it in again? I shall never understand.

26. What's drinking? A mere pause from thinking!

27. There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

28. I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new.

29. By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

30. A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

31. Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon arising. It was the only exercise I got.

32. The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

33. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

34. Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

35. I do think unpunctuality is a vile habit, and all my life I have tried to break myself of it.

36. I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

37. When I was younger I made it a rule never to take strong drink before lunch. It is now my rule never to do so before breakfast.

38. Habit is Heaven's own redress: it takes the place of happiness.

39. Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting a particular way... you become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.

40. Please don't tell me there's no need to worry - it's the only thing I'm any good at.

41. Man: 'I have no sympathy for a man who is intoxicated all the time.' WC: 'A man who's intoxicated all the time doesn't need sympathy.'

42. If you have given way to anger, be sure that over and above the evil involved therein, you have strengthened the habit, and added fuel to the fire. If overcome by a temptation of the flesh, do not reckon it a single defeat, but that you have also strengthened your dissolute habits. Habits and faculties are necessarily affected by the corresponding acts... One who has had fever, even when it has left him, is not in the same condition of health as before, unless indeed his cure is complete. Something of the same sort is true also of diseases of the mind. Behind, there remains a legacy of traces and of blisters: and unless these are effectually erased, subsequent blows on the same spot will produce no longer mere blisters, but sores. If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: 'I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next every two, next every three days!' and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the Gods in thanksgiving. (75)

43. Gossip, public, private, social - to fight against it either by word or pen seems, after all, like fighting with shadows. Everybody laughs at it, protests against it, blames and despises it; yet everybody does it, or at least encourages others in it: quite innocently, unconsciously, in such a small, harmless fashion - yet we do it. We must talk about something, and it is not all of us who can find a rational topic of conversation, or discuss it when found. ~ Ch. 8

44. Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people - as may be noticed of most young children - does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years. ~ Ch. 8

45. Books are a narcotic

46. The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.

47. This is called a peel; I call mine Emma.

48. I must start wearing a watch. I never have you know.

49. Change: 'Small victories, when added together, can become the sum of change.'

50. Atheism is the methodone of the masses. It can help to ease the pain of departure from your previous habit, but it's just as addictive, almost as dangerous, and doesn't provide nearly the rush.

51. To Anthony life was a struggle against death, that waited at every corner. It was as a concession to his hypochondriacal imagination that he formed the habit of reading in bed-it soothed him. He read until he was tired and often fell asleep with the lights still on.

52. Cato said the best way to keep good acts in memory was to refresh them with new.

53. Men's thoughts, are much according to their inclination; their discourse and speeches, according to their learning and infused opinions; but their deeds, are after as they have been accustomed.

54. If we were reasoning, farsighted people, four fifths of us would go straight to the Guardians for relief, and knock the whole social system to pieces with most beneficial reconstructive results. The reason we do not do this is because we work like bees or ants, by instinct or habit, not reasoning about the matter at all. Therefore when a man comes along who can and does reason, and who, applying the Kantian test to his conduct, can truly say to us, If everybody did as I do, the world would be compelled to reform itself industrially, and abolish slavery and squalor, which exist only because everybody does as you do, let us honor that man and seriously consider the advisability of following his example.

55. Washington wasn't born good. Only practice and habit made him so.

56. In his last testament to 'Ali (peace be upon him), the Messenger of Allah (blessings of Allah be upon him and his family) told him: 'O' 'Ali! I advice you to recite the Qur'an in every state (which you may find yourself in).'

57. She contrived to twist her body into first one luxurious position, then another.

58. A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the the pit that is bottomless.

59. Understanding can never be made into a habit, a matter of routine; it demands constant watchfulness, alertness. To understand, there must be pliability, sensitivity, a warmth that has nothing to do with sentimentality.

60. I get letters from people who say 'I hadn't listened to your programme for twelve years, and I was driving home the other night and heard something I thought was fantastic. I've listened every night since, and it was just how it used to be.' Sometimes kids write in and say, 'I was listening to your programme in my bedroom the other night when I was doing my homework, and my mum came in and said, 'What are you listening to?' I said, 'John Peel,' and she said, 'Oh, I used to listen to him when I was your age.'' It's nice being woven into people's lives in that way.

61. The rules that obtain among themselves [a people] appear to them self-evident and self-justifying. This all but universal illusion is one of the examples of the magical influence of custom, which is not only, as the proverb says, a second nature, but is continually mistaken for the first. The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others, or by each to himself. (p. 10)

62. I told him...that we ate when we were not hungry, and drank without the provocation of thirst.

63. Go around - listen to how many times a day you say, 'I love' instead of, 'I hate.' Isn't it interesting that children, as they learn the process of language, always learn the word 'no' years before they learn the word 'yes'? Ask linguists where they hear it. Maybe if they heard more of 'I love, I love, I love' they'd hear it sooner and more often.

64. Interviewer: You once said you had a drug problem... Lily: Yeah, I still do. It's so hard to find good grass these days.

65. If one is able to stop smoking, he may continue, if he is unable to quit, then he must!

66. Je savais que le bien comme le mal est affaire de routine, que le temporaire se prolonge, que l'exterieur s'infiltre au dedans, et que le masque, a la longue, devient visage.

67. Maybe they didn't have to discuss things like this. Maybe they had spent so many years together that they knew how to cooperate so smooth things for other people without even thinking about it. Like actors who have performed the same roles together so often that they can improvise without the slightest confusion.

68. I still don't look at movies twice. It's funny, I just feel I got it the first time. With music it's different. People respond so differently to the whole issue of seeing a movie many times. I'm astonished when I talk to really good critics, who know their stuff and will see a film eight or ten or twelve times. I don't see how they can do it without hating the movie. I would.

69. Yeah, and my foot is like a pendulum. It will keep SWINGING!

70. Susannah ... is on the right side of voluptuous and more laid-back. She loses things likes credit cards and keys.

71. I have to admit that I drive past Bridgwater quite regularly. And fast.

72. Trinny is definitely a hoarder. Her shoe cupboard is open and I lose count when I reach 78.

73. I don't drink water. Fish poop in it.

74. I just like to smile, smiling's my favorite.

75. To while away the idle hours, seated the livelong day before the inkslab, by jotting down without order or purpose whatever trifling thoughts pass through my mind, truely this is a queer and crazy thing to do!

76. But I do all of this, not because I want to life scripturally, but because church culture has a certain rhythm. And when you have marched to this beat since infancy, it is difficult to break free from.

77. He had only filled himself with anger, and he could not cease to hate just because he was asked to; not even because he wanted to

78. Choose the best life; for habit will make it pleasant

79. That was how human beings satisfied their sense of responsibility - checking again even when they knew it was unnecessary

80. My mother used to greet the day with a cigarette and lipstick on her teeth.'

81. I hold on to it [cream cheese] the way a cow does its cud.

82. From my childhood, obedience was something I could not get out of my system. When I entered the armed services at the age of 27, I found being obedient not a bit more difficult than it had been during my life to that point. It was unthinkable that I would not follow orders.

83. It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle--they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

84. Abstainer, n. A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially from inactivity in the affairs of others.

85. Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.

86. How much do you smoke, sir? Two packs a day, is that right? Pussy. I go through two lighters a day. That's right, two lighters! You're a health nut compared to me. You're like the Jack LaLanne of smokers compared to me.

87. The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

88. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

89. The trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

90. We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

91. Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the influence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation.

92. Character is the result of a system of stereotyped principles.

93. You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.

94. Self-discipline, as a virtue or an acquired asset, can be invaluable to anyone.

95. We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.

96. One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.

97. Es ist wahr: wir lieben das Leben, nicht, weil wir an's Leben, sondern weil wir an's Lieben gewohnt sind.

98. If there is no means to prevent drunkenness, a man may become drunk thrice a month; if he oversteps this limit he makes himself guilty of a punishable offence. If he is drunk only twice a month, that is better - if only once, that is more praiseworthy. What could be better than that he should not drink at all? But where shall we find a man who never drinks? If, however, such a man is found, he deserves every respect.

99. Those who marry God can become domesticated too-it's just as hum-drum a marriage as all the others. The word 'Love' means a formal touch of the lips as in the ceremony of the Mass, and 'Ave Maria' like 'dearest' is a phrase to open a letter. This marriage like the world's marriages was held together by habits and tastes shared in common between God and themselves-it was God's taste to be worshipped and their taste to worship, but only at stated hours like a suburban embrace on a Saturday night.

100. I was an idealist in my profession. If I used such expression as 'Jewish bastard' or 'Jewish sow,' it simply meant that this official language had become so much a part of my flesh and blood that I saw nothing unusual in it. I never used anything but spiritual weapons in dealing with offenders.