Habit (psychology)

“Not for nothing is habit called a second and a kind of manufactured nature.”

“Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.”

“Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to such unedifying conversation as about kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, carriages, villages, towns and cities, countries, women, heroes, street- and well-gossip, talk of the departed, desultory chat, speculations about land and sea, talk about being and non-being, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such conversation.”

“If use becomes abuse, we should intervene at once, for if abuse becomes habit, then there is no remedy.”

“Each year one vicious habit rooted out, In time might make the worst Man good throughout.”

“Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.”

“Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.”

“How use doth breed a habit in a man!I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.”

“To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth.”

“Since this is the age of science, not religion, psychiatrists are our rabbis, heroin is our pork, and the addict is the unclean person.”

“A civil habitOft covers a good man.”

“Habit with him was all the test of truth;"It must be right: I've done it from my youth."”

“We sow our thoughts, and we reap our actions; we sow our actions, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, and we reap our characters; we sow our characters, and we reap our destiny.”

“A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.”

“Habits form character and character is destiny.”

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

“Sow an action, reap a habit.”

“Morem fecerat usus.”

“Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.”

“Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

“In ways and thoughts of weakness and of wrong,Threads turn to cords, and cords to cables strong.”

“Habit if not resisted soon becomes necessity.”

“Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth—of carefully respecting the property of others — of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying or cheating or stealing.”

“Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the key-stone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done, the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.”

“Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist, but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement; we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended to a higher atmosphere.”

“The diminutive chains of habit are seldom heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.”

“A large part of Christian virtue consists in right habits.”

“Every sinful act is another cord woven into that mighty cable of habit, which binds the spirit to the throne of darkness.”