Habit Quotes - Page 39

• They may well fear fate who have any infirmity of habit or aim: but they who rest on what is have a destiny beyond destiny, and can make mouths of fortune.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Fate, Destiny, May

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• Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it comes from thoughtlessness or inherited habit. Extract from 'Memories of childhood and youth.'

  Albert Schweitzer

  Memories, Men, Animal

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• If we range through the whole territory of nature, and endeavour to extract from each department the rich stores of knowledge and pleasure they respectively contain, we shall not find a more refined or purer source of amusement, or a more interesting and unfailing subject for recreation, than that which the observation and examination of the structure, affinities, and habits of plants and vegetables, afford.

  Joseph Paxton

  Knowledge, Science, Vegetables

  Sir Joseph Paxton (1838). “A Practical Treatise on the Cultivation of the Dahlia”, p.2

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• Let people who have to observe sickness and death look back and try to register in their observation the appearances which have preceded relapse, attack or death, and not assert that there were none, or that there were not the right ones. A want of the habit of observing conditions and an inveterate habit of taking averages are each of them often equally misleading.

  Florence Nightingale

  Death, Science, Average

  Florence Nightingale, Ramona Salotti (2003). “Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not”, p.100, Barnes & Noble Publishing

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• The history of men of science has one peculiar advantage, as it shows the importance of little things in producing great results. Smeaton learned his principle of constructing a lighthouse, by noticing the trunk of a tree to be diminished from a curve to a cyclinder ... and Newton, turning an old box into a water-clock, or the yard of a house into a sundial, are examples of those habits of patient observation which scientific biography attractively recommends.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Science, Men, Curves

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• Society exists through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.

  John Dewey

  Education, Communication, Mean

  John Dewey (2015). “Democracy and Education”, p.5, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Then, in the 1980's, came the paroxysm of downsizing, and the very nature of the corporation was thrown into doubt. In what began almost as a fad and quickly matured into an unshakable habit, companies were 'restructuring,' 'reengineering,' and generally cutting as many jobs as possible, white collar as well as blue . . . The New York Times captured the new corporate order succinctly in 1987, reporting that... 'All such allegiances are viewed as expendable under the new rules. With survival at stake, only market leadership, strong profits and a high stock price can be allowed to matter'.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Strong, Jobs, New York

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• The habit of arguing in support of atheism, whether it be done from conviction or in pretense, is a wicked and impious practice.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Atheist, Practice, Support

  "On the Nature of the Gods". Book by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 45 BC.

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• Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Order, Discipline, Demand

  1970 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, pt.1, ch.1.

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• Character, my friends, is a byproduct. It is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Character, Great Men, Duty

  "Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson".

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• As years passed away I have formed the habit of looking back upon that former self as upon another person, the remembrance of whose emotions has been a solace in adversity and added zest to the enjoyment of prosperity.

  Simon Newcomb

  New Year, Memorial Day, Adversity

  Simon Newcomb (1903). “The reminiscences of an astronomer”, Harper and Brothers

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• Almost always tradition is nothing but a record and a machine-made imitation of the habits that our ancestors created.

  Walter Lippmann

  Records, Machines, Tradition

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• The habit of doing one's duty drives away fear.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Duty

  Charles Baudelaire (1956). “The Essence of Laughter: And Other Essays, Journals, and Letters”

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• Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit.

  Ovid

  Powerful, Power, Customs

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• It is too bad if you have to do everything upon reflection and can't do anything from early habit.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Reflection, Ifs

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• Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

  Marcel Duchamp

  Art, Lovely, Theory

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• Life never become a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

  Katherine Mansfield

  Life, Life Lesson

  Katherine Mansfield (1996). “The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume IV: 1920-1921”, p.231, Clarendon Press

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• Winning becomes easier over time as the cornerstones of confidence become habits.

  Rosabeth Moss Kanter

  Confidence, Winning, Easier

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• Mans most disagreeable habits and idiosyncrasies, his deceit, his cowardice, his lack of reverence, are engendered by his incomplete adjustment to a complicated civilisation. It is the result of the conflict between our instincts and our culture.

  Sigmund Freud

  Deceit, Culture, Conflict

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• There is surely no contradiction in saying that a certain section of the community may be quite competent to protect the persons and property of the rest, yet quite unfit to direct our opinions, or to superintend our private habits.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Government, Community, Liberty

  "Southey's Colloquies on Society". Book by Thomas B. Macaulay, 1830.

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• When habit has strengthened our sense of duties, they leave us no time for other things; but when young we neglect them and this gives us time for anything.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Giving, Neglect, Young

  Thomas Jefferson, Richard Holland Johnston, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States (1903). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson”

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• Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.

  Theodore Zeldin

  Memories, Learning, Knowledge

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• Your clothes smell heavily of clothing. Your den is filled with low-hanging palls of fresh air. The only rattle in your car is the sound of toll change in the ashtray. The absence of telltale tobacco stains on your shirt collar tells the tale - you've licked the smoking habit.

  Robert Breault

  Air, Smell, Clothes

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• If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism. The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

  Jean Cocteau

  Addiction, House, Smoking

  Jean Cocteau, Margaret Crosland (1972). “Cocteau's world: an anthology of writings”, Owen

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• Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.

  Samuel Johnson

  Evil, May, Influence

  Samuel Johnson (1848). “The Wisdom of the Rambler, Adventurer, and Idler”, p.140

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