Habit Quotes - Page 13

• I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God , and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.

  Saint Augustine

  Old Habits, Evil, Grace

  Sermons 180:10:1,

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• The systems of stereotypes may be the core of our personal tradition, the defenses of our position in society. They are an ordered more or less consistent picture of the world, to which our habits, our tastes, our capacities, our comforts and our hopes have adjusted themselves. They may not be a complete picture of the world, but they are a picture of a possible world to which we are adapted. In that world, people and things have their well-known places, and do certain expected things. We feel at home there. We fit in. We are members.

  Walter Lippmann

  Home, People, May

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• All our "most sacred affections " are merely prosaic habit.

  Cesare Pavese

  Sacred, Affection

  Cesare Pavese, Alma Elizabeth Murch (1961). “This Business of Living”, p.93, Transaction Publishers

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• Don't be too quickTo break bad habits: better stick,Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.

  Bret Harte

  Arsenic, Sticks, Break

  Bret Harte (2016). “Poetical Works, Complete: Top American Novelist”, p.82, VM eBooks

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• If we are to achieve long-range goals, we must learn to set up and accomplish short-range goals that will move us along the way. If we do not consciously select our goals, we may be controlled by goals not of our own choosing - goals imposed by outside pressures (such as the expectations of others) or by our habits (such as procrastination) or by our desire for the approval of the world.

  Ezra Taft Benson

  Moving, Procrastination, Long

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• Bad habits are easy and discipline is hard-and “easy” is where people gravitate. A good work ethic requires a painstaking daily effort. Easy typically leads to a life long list of problems but the discipline of having a plan leads to an extraordinary rewarding life. In the long run, the easy way makes life harder and the harder way makes life easier.

  Tony Horton

  Running, Discipline, Long

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• The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Woodhouse had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.

  Jane Austen

  Love, Heart, Men

  Jane Austen (1882). “Emma”, p.3

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• If the process don't transfer, they cannot even be called thinking. They can be called learning, memory, or habit, but not thinking. The purpose of a course on thinking is to enhance student's abilities to face new challenges and to attack novel problems confidently, rationally and productively.

  Marilyn Jager Adams

  Memories, Past, Thinking

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• Any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and the value of the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group. Hence, once more, the need of a measure for the worth of any given mode of social life.

  John Dewey

  Quality, Groups, Needs

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education: Top American Authors”, p.64, 谷月社

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• We are masters of our actions from the beginning up to the very end. But, in the case of our habits, we are only masters of their commencement - each particular little increase being as imperceptible as in the case of bodily infirmities. But yet our habits are voluntary, in that it was once in our power to adopt or not to adopt such or such a course of conduct.

  Aristotle

  Littles, Our Actions, Increase

  Aristotle (1869). “The Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle”, p.80

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• It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn't any solution to this.

  John S. Hall

  Able, Want, Problem

  "Daily Negations". Book by John S. Hall, 2007.

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• When we think carefully, we see that the brief elation we experience when appeasing sensual impulses may not be very different from what the drug addict feels when indulging his or her habit. Temporary relief is soon followed by a craving for more. And in just the same way that taking drugs in the end only causes trouble, so, too, does much of what we undertake to fulfill our immediate sensory desires.

  Dalai Lama

  Thinking, Drug, Sensual

  The Dalai Lama, Alexander Norman (2010). “Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for the New Millennium”, p.36, Hachette UK

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• Whatever work you undertake, do it seriously, thoroughly and well; never leave it half-done or undone, never feel yourself satisfied unless and until you have given it your very best. Cultivate the habits of discipline and toleration. Surrender not the convictions you hold dear but learn to appreciate the points of view of your opponents.

  Syama Prasad Mukherjee

  Motivational, Work, Views

  Speech delivered at Scottish Church College, Kolkata, December 7, 1935.

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• Every single Act either weakeneth or improveth our Credit with other Men ; and as an habit of being just to our Word will confirm, so an habit of too freely dispensing with it must necessarily destroy it.

  Jimmy Savile

  Men, Our Words, Credit

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• Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.

  Harvey Mackay

  Addiction, Benefits, Rewards

  Harvey Mackay (1999). “Pushing the Envelope: All the Way to the Top”

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• Sit down at ten o'clock in the morning and write anything that comes into my head until twelve. One of the few things I've discovered about writing is to form a habit that becomes an addiction so that if you don't put something down on paper every day, you get really mean and awful with withdrawal symptoms, and your wife and your dog and your kids are going to kick your ass until you get back to it because they can't bear you in that state of mind.

  Frank Pierson

  Dog, Morning, Mean

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• Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.

  Thomas Malthus

  People, House, Crowds

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1989). “An Essay on the Principle of Population”, p.115, Cambridge University Press

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• I advised Chambers, and would advise every young man beginning to compose, to do it as fast as he can, to get a habit of having his mind to start promptly; it is so much more difficult to improve in speed than in accuracy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Men, Mind

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.343

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• It is indeed not easy to distinguish affectation from habit; he that has once studiously developed a style, rarely writes afterwards with complete ease.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Style, Ease

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Babington Macaulay Baron Macaulay (1854). “Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: With Critical Observation on Their Works”, p.64

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• A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest - who look habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern - who expect to have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine - have their faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches.

  John Stuart Mill

  Wisdom, Government, People

  John Stuart Mill (1849). “Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy : in Two Volumes”, p.516

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• Over the years I've studied the habits of golfers. I know what to look for. Watch their eyes. Fear shows up when there is an enlargement of the pupils. Big pupils lead to big scores.

  Sam Snead

  Eye, Golf, Years

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• Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Mind, Atheism

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.335, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats.

  Walter Lippmann

  Real, War, Differences

  Walter Lippmann (1960). “A Preface To Morals”, p.80, Transaction Publishers

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• Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it.

  George Eliot

  Way, Offensive, Making Amends

  George Eliot (1839). “Theophrastus Such, Jubal and other poems and The Spanish gypsy”, p.57

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• For the decisions of our will are often so directly opposed to the decisions of our emotions, that, if we are in the habit of considering our emotions as the test, we shall be very apt to feel like hypocrites in declaring those things to be real which our will alone has decided.

  Hannah Whitall Smith

  Real, Hypocrite, Decision

  Hannah Whitall Smith (2009). “The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life”, p.89, Moody Publishers

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