Quotations: Habits

A magician pulls rabbits out of hats. An experimental psychologist pulls habits out of rats.
Anon

Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words; they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character for it will become your destiny.
Anon

Bad habits are like a comfortable bed, easy to get into, but hard to get out of.
Anon

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
St. Augustine

Curious things, habits. People themselves never knew they had them.
Agatha Christie

A habit is something you can do without thinking - which is why most of us have so many of them.
Frank A. Clark

Men's natures are alike, it is their habits that carry them far apart.
Confucius

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them either. They keep you.
Frank Crane

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
John Dryden

Ill habits gather by unseen degrees -- As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
John Dryden

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.
Albert Einstein

Zoo: An excellent place to study the habits of human beings.
Evan Esar

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income.
Errol Flynn

Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.
Edward Gibbon

A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.
Robert Heinlein

Be as careful of the books you read, as of the company you keep; for your habits and character will be as much influenced by the former as by the latter.
Paxton Hood

Beware of your habits. The better they are the more surely they will be your undoing.
Holbrook Jackson

Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.
William James

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
Samuel Johnson

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
Somerset Maugham

In any family, measles are less contagious than bad habits.
Mignon McLaughlin

The more severe the pain or illness, the more severe will be the necessary changes. These may involve breaking bad habits, or acquiring some new and better ones.
Peter McWilliams

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed.
Herman Melville

Enduring habits I hate.... Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
Friedrich Nietzsche

A large part of virtue consists in good habits.
William Paley

Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
Marcel Proust

Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.
Yiddish Proverb

Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables.
Spanish Proverb

Good habits result from resisting temptation.
Ancient Proverb

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
Jim Ryun

In early childhood you may lay the foundation of poverty or riches, industry or idleness, good or evil, by the habits to which you train your children. Teach them right habits then, and their future life is safe.
Lydia Sigourney

Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life.
Ralph W. Sockman

Property left to a child may soon be lost; but the inheritance of virtue--a good name an unblemished reputation--will abide forever. If those who are toiling for wealth to leave their children, would but take half the pains to secure for them virtuous habits, how much more serviceable would they be. The largest property may be wrested from achild, but virtue will stand by him to the last.
William Graham Sumner

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time.
Mark Twain

Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
Edith Wharton

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