Quotes About Habits

We all know about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for studying the oyster.

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."

Through my life and my experience, I believe getting "positive mental attitude" is true. Your brain has certain pathways in it, and if you feed those pathways with certain types of thoughts, the blood goes to those neurons and nourishes them, and they grow and develop. That's how you build habits. Physically, I think that's how your brain works. If you have certain habits that are negative and causing you problems that you want to change them, you can actually change the blood flow and stuff in your brain by thinking a different way.

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

Thoughts lead to acts, acts lead to habits, habits lead to character - and our character will determine our eternal destiny.

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

There are no good or bad habits. All habits are, by definition, bad.

Your hands are like dogs, going to the same places they've been. You have to be careful when playing is no longer in the mind but in the fingers, going to happy places. You have to break them of their habits or you don't explore; you only play what is confident and pleasing. I'm learning to break those habits by playing instruments I know absolutely nothing about, like a bassoon or a waterphone.

It is not the organs-that is, the character and form of the animal's bodily parts-that have given rise to its habits and particular structures. It is the habits and manner of life and the conditions in which its ancestors lived that have in the course of time fashioned its bodily form, its organs and qualities.

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

It took me five months to lose twenty pounds and it took me hours to gain it back. I mean it was magical how quickly it all happened. Going back to my poor eating habits after having really good eating habits my stomach was a little unsettled.

The difference, so observable in men's understandings and parts, does not arise so much from their natural faculties, as acquired habits.

In reality no food is valued solely for its nutritive power and no garment or house solely for the protection it affords against cold weather and rain.... the demand for goods is widely influenced by metaphysical, religious, and ethical considerations, by aesthetic value judgments, by customs, habits, prejudice, tradition, changing fashions, and many other things.

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

There are certain bad habits we've groomed our whole life -- from personality flaws to fashion faux pas. And it has been the role of parents and friends, outside of some minor tweaking, to reinforce the belief that we're okay just as we are. But it's not enough to just be yourself. You have to be your best self. And that's a tall order if you haven't found your best self yet.

This was an away-day for the deputy prime minister's staff, who've had a change of responsibilities [on John Prescott's scandalous playing habits... on the croquet lawn]

The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.

Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.

O God, when my faith gets overladen with dust, blow it clean with the wind of your Spirit. When my habits of obedience get stiff and rusty, anoint them with the oil of your Spirit. Restore the enthusiasm of my first love for you.

It's very hard to stop doing things you're used to doing. You almost have to dismantle yourself and scatter it all around and then put a blindfold on and put it back together so that you avoid old habits.

You can learn great things from your mistakes when you aren't busy denying them. Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

However, to modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consiously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habits' routines, and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it -- and every chapter in this book is devoted to illustrating a different aspect of why that control is real.

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin.

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.

I had been working at home at the time and was looking to find a studio space somewhere outside of my apartment. I thought that might be good for me in terms of having a little bit more discipline with my work habits.

Newcomers should be put in an established position where the expectations are known and help is available. New major assignments should mainly go to people whose behaviors and habits are well known and who have already earned trust and credibility.

Passions weaken, but habits strengthen, with age, and it is the great task of youth to set the current of habit and to form the tastes which are most productive of happiness in life.

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.

The most unendurable thing, to be sure, the really terrible thing, would be a life without habits, a life which continually required improvisation.

Five Great Habits for Better Relationships: acceptance (smile each time), appreciation (say thank you to everyone), admiration (compliment people on their appearance or clothing, etc.), approval (praise immediately, specifically and repeatedly), and attention (be a good listener).

Dragons, you know, we have a good deal of biology and zoology about the dragon; we know their habits. The dragon tends to guard things, and he usually has these guarded in a cave... Now dragons don't know what to do either with beautiful girls or gold, but they just hang on. There are people like this. We call them creeps.

Beings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap.

I'm doing a lot of speaking and talking about habits, which is this subject that obsesses me. That's a lot of fun.

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.

What you experience as "reality," including your physical body and aging, is shaped by your habits of perception.

Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.

The arts develop skills and habits of mind that are important for workers in the new economy of ideas.

Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.

As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prarie-dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor's to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits.

Your habits will determine your future.

The simplest principles become difficult of practice, when habits, formed in error, have been fixed by time, and the simplest truths hard to receive when prejudice has warped the mind.

When young men or women are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideals of the young are formed and adopted is more important still. For the ideal with which you go forward to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet.

Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses , bulwarks against time and despair.

It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.

The Nation State as such is totally a construction: what we feel for it in terms of habits, traditions, countryside or nature could exist without the notion of Nation.

We will be at our best when times are at their worst because of our habits, attitude and chemistry.

Small habits well pursued betimes May reach the dignity of crimes.

Toleration of people who differ in convictions and habits requires a residual awareness of the complexity of truth and the possibility of opposing view having some light on one or the other facet of a many-sided truth.