242 Habits Quotes

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

There's no harm in talking to yourself, but try to avoid telling yourself jokes you've heard before.

Reading isn't good for a ballplayer. Not good for his eyes. If my eyes went bad even a little bit I couldn't hit home runs. So I gave up reading.

People's dreams are made out of what they do all day. The same way a dog that runs after rabbits will dream of rabbits. It's what you do that makes your soul, not the other way around.

Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.

The mind is like a fertile garden in which anything that is planted, flowers or weeds, will grow.

I really do work in solitude.

In order to read one must sit down, usually indoors. I am restless and would rather sail a boat than crack a book. I've never had a very lively literary curiosity, and it has sometimes seemed to me that I am not really a literary fellow at all. Except that I write for a living.

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

Onion rings in the car cushions do not improve with time.

There's something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she's only measured water in it.

The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.

I go to bed early; my favorite dream comes on at nine.

Rise early, that by habit it may become familiar, agreeable, healthy, and profitable. It may, for a while, be irksome to do this, but that will wear off; and the practice will produce a rich harvest forever thereafter; whether in public or private walks of life.

I've bought more music for my Ipod in one year than I bought in the last ten years of my life.

Since trifles make the sum of human things, And half our misery from our foibles springs.

Small habits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes.

One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it.

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

I have a lot of tics and phobias. I hate to travel. I hate to go to festivals. I hate it when somebody gets close behind me. I'm scared of the darkness. I hate open doors.

The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.

I had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

I totally related to Cole Porter's magnetic pull to any piano that was in the room, which he was famous for doing, as was Gershwin. You couldn't drag them away from a piano.

Every once in a while someone without a single bad habit gets caught.

You won't skid if you stay in a rut.

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Nothing is stronger than habit.

I now realize that taking drugs was like taking an aspirin without having a headache.

'I have a wash more now than I used to y'know... I have a shower everynight.'

'Har under ar askan av en man som hade vanan att skjuta allt till morgondagen. Dock battrades han pa sitt yttersta och dog verkligen den 31 januari 1972'

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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.

Her handwriting in these pencilled jottings, made forty-five years ago, is exactly as it is today: this makes me suspect, when I am not with her, that she is a closet intellectual.

In the march up to the heights of fame, there comes a spot close to the summit in which a man reads nothing but detective stories.

I have always been a quarter of an hour before my time and it has made a man of me.

The Devil turns his back to a door that is shut.

We discovered at one point that the brick wall of the pillar would hold up a sock pretty well. This led to sorting socks by putting them on the wall, which in turn led to mosaics built entirely of socks. Mission drift is a hazard in all pursuits, including doing the laundry.

Nevere yit Was non, which half so loste his wit Of drinke, as thei of such thing do Which cleped is the jolif wo.

Ill weed groweth fast.

I do believe the sum extent of the messiness, disarrangement, disorder, and dirtiness of your room is equal to that of your brain.

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

We know all our lines so well... We've said them so many times: Time and time again, Line and line again.

In the warm room She'll touch you with your Mamma's hand. You'll long to kiss those red lips, But when you do It'll feel like kicking a habit.

Hammer Horror, Hammer Horror, Won't leave me alone. The first time in my life, I leave the lights on To ease my soul.

After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby.

We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It's the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness.

As a man eats so shall he become.

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.

I'm really good at staying home all day in my pajamas because I had a [dad] who did that.

I grew up as a TV baby, with my TV babysitter, up until I was about 10. Then my mother just ripped the thing out of the wall and put it in a closet, and we didn't watch it. I have that sort of ability to become addicted to it. And I'm just so fascinated by it once I turn it on, I'm not even that aware what's there. I'm just watching it. So I don't ever turn it on. I get my news from the newspaper. I don't want to watch the Hollywood news product on TV... There's no other piece of furniture in my home I'd stare at for three hours at a time, so I try not to do it to the TV.

Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity. I do not know from where he comes or where he goes. I clutch at his onward march in my ephemeral breast, I listen to his panting struggle, I shudder when I touch him.

I hurt him again. I meant to pretend to love him, but in the moment I simply told the truth, which is my habit. And I don't know that I want to change that habit. You can tell a lie now and then. But what happens to you when you try to live your whole life inside a lie?

As a matter of fact, Rice Krispies are favored by solitary people.

Resist beginnings; the prescription comes too late when the disease has gained strength by long delays.

He has the attention span of a bolt of lightning.

I cook a lot, almost every night.

And you realize you're an alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize you're an alcoholic when you repeat yourself. You realize you're an alcoholic...oh, dammit, dammit, God DAMMIT.

I am in favor of preserving the French habit of kissing ladies' hands - after all, one must start somewhere.

Sow a thought, and you reap an act; Sow an act, and you reap a habit; Sow a habit, and you reap a character; Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.

When puzzled, it never hurts to read the primary documents-a rather simple and self-evident principle that has, nonetheless, completely disappeared from large sectors of the American experience.

I had one little glimpse in the mirror and it was like an electric shock. Horrifying. It took me three or four days to get over it. On air, the plastic surgeon said: 'Would you have anything done?' Oh no, I said. 'Do you smoke?' No, never. Soon as the camera was off I took his card and had a cigarette.

'What would Deftmenes be if we went around obeying orders all the time?' 'They might be ruling the Carpet,' said Pismire. 'Ha!' said Brocando, 'but the trouble about obeying orders is, it becomes a habit. And then everything depends on who's giving the orders.'

Lose no time; be always employed in something useful; cut off unnecessary actions.

It is man's highest interest not to violate, or attempt to violate, the rules which Infinite Wisdom has laid down. The means by which men are to attain great elevation may be classed in three divisions - physical, mental, and moral. Whatever relates to health, belongs to the first; whatever relates to the improvement of the mind, belongs to the second. The formation of good manners and virtuous habits constitutes the third.

And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine.

Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.

Images. Millions of images. That's what I eat.

'Living with a woman is going to be really tough. They tend to be really domesticated, you know. They fold things and clean things and know what they are going to have for dinner several hours before it's time to eat.'

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.

Carley: I was wondering if there are any pre performance habits that you have before you go on stage.

The path to success is not making one thing 100% better, but in making 100 things 1% better.

I suffer from cacoethes loquendi, a mania or itch for talking, and from vanity . . . and morbidity, and, as is obvious to everyone who knows me, an inborn, an inveterate flair for histrionics. ... I am pachydermatous. ... I am a veritable peripatetic bifurcated volcano on behalf of Democratic principles.

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

...action restarting action: all we need to reverse inertia is some sense of consequence - some sense that beyond this occurrence there is another, and that they are linked, some sense that life has chapters.

procrastination is the art of keeping<up with yesterday

'The folk are peculiar in many ways,' said Erwig. 'They preen themselves upon the gentility of their habits, yet they refuse to whitewash their hair, and they are slack in their religious observances. For instance, they make obeisance to Divine Wiulio with the right hand, not on the buttock, but on the abdomen, which we here consider a slipshod practice.' in 'The Bagful of Dreams' from Cugel's Saga

He looked away to hide his face from her. By habit, really, his old habit of hiding his emotions. There was nothing she hadn't seen of his emotions by now. No weakness she didn't already know

Eating icecream late at night is so bad, but I love it

... in my formerly nicotine stained fingers.

Me and my ni**az is so close, it's complicated/One ni**a smokin and drinkin, and yet we all faded

I seems I lost my little homie he's a changed man/Hit the pen and now no sinnin is the game plan

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

'People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - that's why we recommend it daily.' Zig Ziglar

Laws are never as effective as habits.

'Keep reading books, stay in school. I encourage kids to read as much as they can; I challenge you to read a book every two weeks, like I try to.'

Accustom yourself to tireless activity...

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.