Though Buffet is reported to have expressed such ideas with such remarks many times in his lectures, he never claimed to originate the idea, and in the article "The Chains of Habit Are Too Light To Be Felt Until They Are Too Heavy To Be Broken" at the Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/tag/warren-buffett/ it is shown that this sort of expression about chains goes back at least to similar ideas presented by Samuel Johnson in "The Vision of Theodore, The Hermit of Teneriffe, Found in His Cell" in The Gentleman’s Magazine, Vol. 18 (April 1748), p.160:
It was the peculiar artifice of Habit not to suffer her power to be felt at first. Those whom she led, she had the address of appearing only to attend, but was continually doubling her chains upon her companions; which were so slender in themselves, and so silently fastened, that while the attention was engaged by other objects, they were not easily perceived. Each link grew tighter as it had been longer worn, and when, by continual additions, they became so heavy as to be felt, they were very frequently too strong to be broken.
Such sentiments were later succinctly summarized by Maria Edgeworth in Moral Tales For Young People by Miss Edgeworth (1806), Vol 1, Second Edition, p. 86:
… the diminutive chains of habit, as somebody says, are scarcely ever heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.
Disputed
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
“The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
Und müden Augen jedes Licht zu scharf, und müden Lippen jeder Hauch zu schwer, Lächelnd. und müden Ohren jedes Wort zu viel.
Act II.
Leonce and Lena (1838)
“Some knowledge is too heavy… you cannot bear it… your Father will carry it until you are able.”
Source: The Hiding Place
“Your tail, is becoming too heavy to wag.”
[The Siege at Peking, Peter Fleming, 1959, NEW YORK 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y, HARPER & BROTHERS, 226, 1-9-2011, One account describes an audience which Tung had of the Empress Dowager on 23 June, the third day of the Siege, at which he complained that 'Jung Lu has the guns which my army needs; with their aid not a stone would be left standing in the whole of the Legation Quarter.' The Empress Dowager, who had been painting a design of bamboos on silk when the warrior was announced, dismissed him with contumely. 'Your tail,' she said elliptically, 'is becoming too heavy to wag.' Ching-Shan mentions Tung's grievance about guns a week later.]
“Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.”
C'est un poids bien pesant qu'un nom trop tôt fameux.
La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41 (1722)
Citas
