Habitual Quotes - Page 8

• Not every good idea survives. Not every new form of art is repeated. Not every new potential instinct is successful. Only the successful ones get repeated. By natural selection and then through repetition they become probable, more habitual.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Art, Successful, Ideas

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• Artists speak to a different part of us, bypassing the cloudy filter of reason and the fears and prejudices of the habitual mind.

  Wes Nisker

  Artist, Mind, Different

  Wes Nisker (2012). “The Essential Crazy Wisdom”, p.111, Ten Speed Press

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• Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

  Charles Darwin

  Differences, Chance, Origin Of Species

  Charles Darwin (2010). “Evolutionary Writings: including the Autobiographies”, p.286, OUP Oxford

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• O Heavenly Father, convert my religion from a name to a principle! Bring all my thoughts and movements into an habitual reference to Thee!

  Thomas Chalmers

  Father, Names, Principles

  Diary entry, March 14, 1812.

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• In every human society of which we have any record, there are those who teach and those who learn, for learning a way of life is implicit in all human culture as we know it. But the separation of the teacher's role from the role of all adults who inducted the young into the habitual behavior of the group, was a comparatively late invention. Furthermore, when we do find explicit and defined teaching, in primitive societies we find it tied in with a sense of the rareness or the precariousness of some human tradition.

  Margaret Mead

  Teacher, Teaching, Adults

  "An Anthropologist Looks at the Teacher's Role". Educational Method, Vol 21, p. 219-223, 1942.

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• A standard of living is of the nature of habit. ...it acts almost solely to prevent recession from a scale of conspicuous expenditure that has once become habitual.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Habit, Scales, Standards

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS: An Economic Study of American Institutions and a Social Critique of Conspicuous Consumption: Development of Institutions That Shape Society and Influence the Livelihood of Citizens: Based on Sociological & Economical Theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Adam Smith and Herbert Spencer”, p.68, e-artnow

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• Clericalism: the habitual confusion between that which is of Caesar, and that of God.

  Giulio Andreotti

  Confusion

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• Sentir mon Cœur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man - the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings... The value of words help to define the feeling itself... The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.

  Herbert Read

  Memories, Men, Feelings

  "The Cult of Sincerity". Book by Herbert Read, 1968.

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• It is believed that physiognomy is only a simple development of the features already marked out by nature. It is my opinion, however, that in addition to this development, the features come insensibly to be formed and assume their shape from the frequent and habitual expression of certain affections of the soul. These affections are marked on the countenance; nothing is more certain than this; and when they turn into habits, they must leave on it durable impressions.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Simple, Expression, Soul

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• Habitual intoxication is the epitome of every crime.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Crime, Epitome, Intoxication

  Douglas William Jerrold, Blanchard Jerrold (1859). “Specimens of Douglas Jerrold's wit: together with selections, chiefly from his contributions to journals, intended to illustrate his opinions”, p.41

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• Grace in women has more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, "in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face," which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them.

  William Hazlitt

  Character, Eye, Air

  William Hazlitt (1872). “Sketches and Essays: And Winterslow (essays Written There).”, p.365

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• All birds during the pairing season become more or less sentimental, and murmur soft nothings in a tone very unlike the grinding-organ repetition and loudness of their habitual song. The crow is very comical as a lover; and to hear him trying to soften his croak to the proper Saint-Preux standard has something the effect of a Mississippi boatman quoting Tennyson.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Bird, Crow

  James Russell Lowell (2016). “Delphi Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell (Illustrated)”, p.1661, Delphi Classics

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• Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.

  William James

  Regret, Men, Agents

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• It is of unspeakable advantage to possess our minds with an habitual good intention, and to aim all our thoughts, words, and actions at some laudable end.

  Joseph Addison

  Mind, Action, Good Intentions

  Joseph Addison (1839). “Essays, Moral and Humorous: Also Essays on Imagination and Taste”, p.76

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• The essence of humor is that it should be unexpected, that it should embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind.

  Agnes Repplier

  Humor, Essence, Mind

  Agnes Repplier (2015). “Americans and Others”, p.21, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• There are some tempers--how shall I describe them--formed either of such impenetrable matter, or wrought up by habitual selfishness to such an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature, or had no lot or connection at all with the species.

  Laurence Sterne

  Selfishness, Connections, Matter

  Laurence Sterne (1873). “The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author”, p.26, London : Bickers, H. Sotheran

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• There is nothing more effectual in showing us the weakness of any habitual fallacy or assumption than to hear it sympathetically through the ears, as it were, of a skeptic.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Weakness, Ears, Assumption

  Margaret Oliphant (1876). “Phoebe, Junior0: A Last Chronicle of Carlingford : in Two Volumes”, p.40

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• For the habitual truth-teller and truth-seeker, indeed, the whole world has very little liking. He is always unpopular.

  H. L. Mencken

  World, Littles, Truth Seekers

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• Unless we believe that God renews creation every day, our prayers grow habitual and tedious.

  Baal Shem Tov

  Prayer, Believe, Creation

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• Every action is self-perpetuating, every thought is self-perpetuating. Once you cooperate with it, you are giving energy to it. Sooner or later it will become habitual. You will do it and you will not be the doer; you will do it just because of the force of habit.

  Rajneesh

  Self, Giving, Energy

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• Distraction is our habitual state. Not the distraction of the person who withdraws from the world in order to shut himself up in the secret and ever-changing land of his fantasy, but the distraction of the person who is always outside himself, lost in the trivial, senseless, turmoil of everyday life.

  Octavio Paz

  Order, Land, Secret

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• I confess, right at the start, to the doubts - and sometimes outright dreads - that go with me as I climb the stairs to my study in the morning, coffee mug in hand: I have to admit to the habitual apprehension mixed with a sort of reverence, as I light the incense . . . and wonder: what is going to happen today? Will anything happen? Will the angel come today?

  Gail Godwin

  Morning, Coffee, Angel

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• Of cases where a man is truthful both in speech and conduct when no considerations of honesty come in, from an habitual sincerity of disposition. Such sincerity may be esteemed a moral excellence; for the lover of truth, who is truthful even when nothing depends on it, will a fortiori be truthful when some interest is at stake, since having all along avoided falsehood for its own sake, he will assuredly avoid it when it is morally base; and this is a disposition that we praise.

  Aristotle

  Honesty, Men, Excellence

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• There is no such thing as character other than the habitual action, as Mr. Aristotle told us two thousand years ago.

  David Mamet

  Character, Years, Two

  David Mamet (1991). “On directing film”, Viking Pr

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• It's not what we do once in a while that counts, but our habitual actions. What ultimately determines who we become and where we go in life are our decisions. These decisions shape our destiny.

  Tony Robbins

  Destiny, Decision, Shapes

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