Quotes About Habits

Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. You cannot eliminate habits that no longer serve you. You can only replace them with new habits that support your goals. Moment by moment, you need to live with awareness and structure the habits that you include or exclude in your days.

The only way we could remember would be by constant re-reading, for knowledge unused tends to drop out of mind. Knowledge used does not need to be remembered; practice forms habits and habits make memory unnecessary. The rule is nothing; the application is everything.

When Jennie, mother of Winston Churchill invited playwright George Bernard Shaw to lunch, he telegraphed: "Certainly not. What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well-known habits?" She replied, "Know nothing of your habits; hope they are better than your manners."

The really good thing about using people who are really green is that you don't have to erase a bunch of bad habits and then put good ones in. You can just start feeding them good habits.

To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.

The life-history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities.

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.

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

I'll give up my bad habits as soon as equally satisfying good habits become available.

Old habits eat good intentions for lunch. Change your habits so you can change your outcomes.

Remember that basketball is a game of habits. If you make the other guy deviate from his habits, you've got him

Tension is a habit. Relaxing is a habit. Bad habits can be broken, good habits formed.

Whatever your present situation, I assure you that you are not your habits. You can replace old patterns of self-defeating behavior with new patterns, new habits of the effectiveness, happiness and trust-based relationships.

You cannot change your future, but you can change your habits, and surely your habits will change your future.

As the priest is characterized by his cassock, so the smoker by his pipe. The way in which he holds it, raises it to his lips, and knocks out the ashes, reveals his personality, habits, passions, and even his thoughts.

Redemption is as comprehensive as Creation and Fall. God does not save our souls while leaving our minds to function on their own. He redeems the whole person. Conversion is meant to give new direction to our thoughts, emotions, wills and habits.

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.

I'd always believed that any song worth singing is worth putting harmony on. When it comes time for the harmonies to come in, I will move to my left because my brother and I always used to use one microphone, and so you had to share the mic. And, even today, I will move over to the left to give the harmony room, knowing in my mind that there's no harmony standing on my right. But it's just old habits are hard to break.

When it comes to breaking old habits and starting new ones, remember to be patient with yourself. If you've spent twenty, thirty, or forty years or more repeating the behaviors you're now trying to change, you've got to expect it's going to take time and effort before you see lasting results.

All of our life is but a mass of small habits - practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual - that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits . . . it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made. And we cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled ourselves. Nor can you look at inaction from the same point of view as others, unless you are prepared to change your habits and make them like theirs.

Making the most of your life is unusual. That's why you need to develop unusual habits to earn outstanding rewards.

[If] the nature of ... government [were] a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there [the] clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

There is something so different in Venice from any other place in the world, that you leave at once all accustomed habits and everyday sights to enter an enchanted garden.

The longer men sin, the more easily they can; for every act of transgression weakens conscience, stupefies intellect, hardens hearts, adds force to bad habits, and takes force from good example. And, surely, there is nothing in such associations; as wicked affinities will insure to the sinner in the future state, to incline him to repentance.

I think the big myth about habits, and happiness too, is that there's somehow a magic "one size fits all" solution. That, "If it works for you it's going to work for me," and it's just a matter of figuring out what that habit would be, whether that's do it first thing in the morning, or start small, or do it for thirty days, or give yourself a cheat day.

All we can thus far say about the duration of the units of [the business cycle] and each of [its] two phases is that it will depend on the nature of the particular innovations that carry a cycle,... and the financial conditions and habits prevailing in the business community in each case.

Individuals out of work for an extended period can become less employable as they lose the specific skills acquired in their previous jobs and also lose the habits needed to hold down any job.

I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic . . . the term "mores" . . . meaning . . . habits of the heart.

Gandhi said 'One cannot do right in one area of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in another; Life is one indivisible whole.' This point of wisdom is profound. A commitment to excellence is not just reserved for a few select areas of your life - it must be reflected in everything you do. Your diet must reflect your commitment to excellence. Your physique must reflect your commitment to excellence. Your personal habits must reflect your commitment to excellence and your thoughts must reflect a commitment to excellence.

The book, I think, like the map before it, like the clock, created or help create a revolution in the human mind in the way our habits of mind and ultimately the way we use our brains.

A French observer is surprised to hear how often an English or an American lawyer quotes the opinions of others, and how little he alludes to his own; ... This abnegation of his own opinion, and this implicit deference to the opinion of his forefathers, which are common to the English and American lawyer, this servitude of thought which he is obliged to profess, necessarily give him more timid habits and more conservative inclinations in England and America than in France.

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

Where can I find a man governed by reason instead of habits and urges?

True repentance is no light matter. It is a thorough change of heart about sin, a change showing itself in godly sorrow and humiliation - in heartfelt confession before the throne of grace - in a complete breaking off from sinful habits, and an abiding hatred of all sin. Such repentance is the inseparable companion of saving faith in Christ.

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.

For good or ill, your habits will make or break you.

Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits.

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.

It needs more than ever to be stressed that the best and truest educators are parents under God. The greatest school is the family. In learning, no act of teaching in any school or university compares to the routine task of mothers in teaching a babe who speaks no language the mother tongue in so short a time. No other task in education is equal to this. The moral training of the children, the discipline of good habits, is an inheritance from the parents to the children which surpasses all other. The family is the first and basic school of man.

I think of empathy as a set of cumulative effects, ideally - that it can be a force shaping your habits, shaping where you put your attention and then - if you're hard on yourself, in good ways - pushing you to translate that attention into action, on whatever scale.

The wise say that our failure is to form habits: for habit is the mark of a stereotyped world.

What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.

I can start playing ukulele and then I'll go to a note that I think will be there, but because of the tuning, it's a completely different note. That excites me. That's why I had the ukulele around in the first place, years ago. It was to just break out of habits.

You may dazzle the mind with a thousand brilliant discoveries of natural science; you may open new worlds of knowledge which were never dreamed of before; yet, if you have not developed in the soul of the pupil strong habits of virtue which will sustain her in the struggle of life, you have not educated her, but only put in her hand a powerful instrument of self-destruction.

Your behavior is based on your beliefs, and what you do and say, over and over again, helps develop your habits.

Remember that this is not something we do just once or twice. Interrupting our destructive habits and awakening our heart is the work of a lifetime.