Quotes about habit
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Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: Stillness Speaks (2003), Ch 7

Life, People, Sense

“Don't let your habits become handcuffs”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Year of Pleasures

“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.”

George Lois (1931) American art director, designer and author

Problem

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Happiness, Dependency

“We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass: we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.”

Maggie O'Farrell (1972) British writer

Source: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

World

“At some point, being angry is just another bad habit, like smoking, and you keep poisoning yourself without thinking about it.”

Jonathan Tropper (1970) American writer

Thinking

“Our happiness depends on the habit of mind we cultivate. So practice happy thinking every day. Cultivate the merry heart, develop the happiness habit, and life will become a continual feast." ~”

Norman Vincent Peale (1898–1993) American writer

Life, Happiness, Thinking, Heart

“He was my drug, and I had no desire to kick the habit.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

“Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kind of things one could get used to.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

Stupidity, Night

“Loneliness does not worry me; life is difficult enough, putting up with yourself and with your own habits.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Life, Loneliness

“Valentine!"
"You mean father. I despise this modern habit of calling one's parents by their names."
"What I want to call you is a hell of a lot more unprintable than your name."
- Clary Fray and Valentine Morgenstern (City of Ashes)”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Hell, Parent

“We have to consciously study how to be tender with each other until it becomes a habit because what was native has been stolen from us, the love of Black women for each other.”

Audre Lorde (1934–1992) writer and activist

essay "Eye to Eye", in Sister Outsider

Love, Women, Study

“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.”

Octavia E. Butler book Bloodchild and Other Stories

Source: Bloodchild and Other Stories

Help, Dependency, Forgetting, Motivational

“You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life. Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Rachel's Holiday

Life

“When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

“Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.”

Milan Kundera (1929–2023) Czech author of Czech and French literature

Source: Farewell Waltz

Forgiveness, Appearance, Time

“Habit is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do), and desire (want to do).”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Knowledge

“It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.”

Muriel Spark book Memento Mori

Source: Memento Mori

People

“But I wondered if all this kissing was a bad habit with him and me. The thing we did with our mouths instead of talking.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Kiss

“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking,”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1930s, Wisehart interview (1930)
Context: Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

Age, Thinking, Reading

“I should have warned her about your habit of never doing what you're told." Jace squinted at her. "Are those Isabelle's clothes? They look ridiculous on you."

"I could point out that you burned my clothes." -Jace and Clary pg. 63”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Clothes

“Unprovided with original learning, unformed in the habits of thinking, unskilled in the arts of composition, I resolved to write a book.”

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) English historian and Member of Parliament

Books, Art, Thinking, Learning

“All people are the same; only their habits differ.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People

“There are good sailors. Well, some good sailors. In a way they are ideal as husbands. They drop in every six months for a wild celebration, then they drop out again before one gets bored with their company or annoyed with by their habits.”

Kerry Greenwood (1954) Australian crime writer

Source: Queen of the Flowers

Way

“Fear is a habit; I am not afraid.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Fear

“Old habits are hard to forget, and old fears are habits.”

Raymond E. Feist book The King's Buccaneer

Source: The King's Buccaneer

Fear, Forgetting

“It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.”

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) American novelist, short story writer and poet

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

World, Strong

“He found himself in habiting the vast, empty plateau where most people live, between boredom and contentment.”

Jess Walter book Beautiful Ruins

Source: Beautiful Ruins

People

“My life - my personality, my habits, even my speech - is a combination of the books I choose to read, the people I choose to listen to, and the thoughts I choose to tolerate in my mind”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

Life, People, Books, Reading

“People who start a sentence with personally (and they're always women) ought to be thrown to the lions. It's a repulsive habit.”

Georgette Heyer (1902–1974) British historical romance and detective fiction novelist

Source: Death in the Stocks

Women, People, Personality

“I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits.”

Kent Beck (1961) software engineer

Kent Beck in: Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant (2012) Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code.

“One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

"Du Rêve" in La Difficulté d’Etre [The Difficulty of Being] (1947)

Dreams

“Psychedelics helped me to escape.. albeit momentarily.. from the prison of my mind. It over-rode the habit patterns of thought and I was able to taste innocence again. Looking at sensations freshly without the conceptual overly was very profound.”

Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now

Help

“It's always the idle habits you acquire which you will regret. Father said that. That Christ was not crucified: he was worn away by a minute clicking of little wheels. That had no sister.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Sister, Christ

“Of offering more than what I can deliver,
I have a bad habit, it is true.
But I have to offer more than I can deliver,
To be able to deliver what I do.”

Ken Kesey (1935–2001) novelist

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Gratitude

“Owen meany who rarely wasted words and who had the conversation-stopping habit of dropping remarks like coins into a deep pool of water… remarks that sank, like truth, to the bottom of the pool where they would remain untouchable.”

John Irving book A Prayer for Owen Meany

Source: A Prayer for Owen Meany

Truth, Water

“Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Light

“Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Flowers, Lying

“Detective, I don't know where the boyfriend is, really," I said. And it was true, considering tide, current, and the habits of marine scavengers. -Dexter”

Jeff Lindsay (1952) American playwright and crime novelist Jeffry P. Freundlich

Source: Dexter By Design

“It may, after all, be the bad habit of creative talents to invest themselves in pathological extremes that yield remarkable insights but no durable way of life for those who cannot translate their psychic wounds into significant art or thought.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

Life, Art, Way

“We're all trying to decide whether your scores up there are a miracle or a mistake."

"A habit.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“So long as one is happy one can endure any discipline: it was unhappiness that broke down the habits of work.”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Source: The End of the Affair

Happiness

“A child-like man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle-aged habit and convention.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

Source: La volgarità in letteratura

Age, Chance

“Only a habit can subdue another habit.”

Og Mandino book The Greatest Salesman in the World

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Strong

“Character is simply habit long continued.”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

“Reminding ourselves of the gospel is the most important daily habit we can establish.”

C.J. Mahaney (1953) American clergyman

Source: The Cross Centered Life: Keeping the Gospel The Main Thing

“You could tell a lot about a man by the books he keeps - his tastes, his interest, his habits.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

Source: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

Books

“True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Le Mystère Laïc (1928); later published in Collected Works Vol. 10 (1950)

“Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergize
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Understanding, Thinking

“When you showed someone how you felt, it was fresh and honest. When you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Variant: When you showed someone how you felt, it was fesh and honest. Whe you told someone how you felt, there might be nothing behind the words but habit or expectation.
Source: Handle with Care

“Got to keep losing horses," he said drowsily. "Bad habit.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Source: Erak's Ransom

Horse

“Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Ancient Rule of Twenty-one: if you do anything for twenty-one days in a row, it will be installed as a habit.”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Remarkable Story About Living Your Dreams

“Lookin' back is a bad habit.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit

“Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Women, Men

“The bitterness of joy lies in the knowledge that it cannot last. Nor should joy last beyond a certain season, for, after that season, even joy would become merely habit.”

Tanith Lee book Delusion's Master

Source: Delusion's Master

Knowledge, Joy, Season

“Point is, people lie a lot. Sometimes out of habit. Not many people are good at telling the truth.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

People, Truth, Lie

“Men best show their character in trifles, where they are not on their guard. It is in the simplest habits, that we often see the boundless egotism which pays no regard to the feelings of others and denies nothing to itself.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Men, Feeling

“There's no better way to inform and expand you mind on a regular basis than to get into the habit of reading good literature.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Way, Literature, Reading

“Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.”

Barbara Kingsolver book Prodigal Summer

Source: Prodigal Summer (2000).

Life, Secret, World, Solitude

“Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life

“adj.
It has always been my habit, ever since junior high school, to ask that question:
“What are you thinking?”
It is always an act of desperation, and I keep on asking, even though I know it will never work the way I want it to.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

School, Way, Question, Thinking

“Cecil flashed a grin. "Quite. Plus your rather irritating habit of treating your superior officers as your, ah…" Cecil paused, apparently groping again for just the right word.

"Equals?" Miles hazarded.

"Cattle," Cecil corrected judiciously.”

Lois McMaster Bujold book The Vor Game

Source: The Vor Game

“I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.”

Umberto Eco book Foucault's Pendulum

Source: Foucault's Pendulum

“Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

“She liked the life she had. She loved habits. She craved a day with nothing in it, a long, quiet stretch of hours in the studio.”

Ann Brashares book Sisterhood Everlasting

Source: Sisterhood Everlasting

Love, Life

“People don't remember me. Really. It's not a paranoid thing; I just have this habit of slipping through memories. It doesn't bother me all that much, except I guess that's a lie; it does. For some reason, I test very high on forgettability.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

People, Lie, Memory

“Bad books engender bad habits, but bad habits engender good books.”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

Books

“It's a very bad habit, but one I find hard to break.”

Douglas Preston (1956) American author

“I fell, you see. Trod on my abbot, Father Habit. Oh, dear! I mean…”

Brian Jacques Redwall

Variant: Err, sorry Father Abbot. I tripped y'see. Trod on my Abbot, Father Habit. Oh dear, I mean....
Source: Redwall

“I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“It’s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too.”

Leonard Cohen book Beautiful Losers

Source: Beautiful Losers

Love, People

“People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: People had a habit of looking at me as if I were some kind of mirror instead of a person. They didn't see me, they saw their own lewd thoughts, then they white-masked themselves by calling me the lewd one.
Source: On Being Blonde (2007), p. 54

People, Personality

“Fernanda, on the other hand, looked for it in vain along the paths of her everyday itinerary without knowing that the search for lost things is hindered by routine habits and that is why it is so difficult to find them.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“Life has got a habit of not standing hitched. You got to ride it like you find it. You got to change with it. If a day goes by that don't change some of your old notions for new ones, that is just about like trying to milk a dead cow.”

Woody Guthrie (1912–1967) American singer-songwriter and folk musician

Life, Change, Dead

“He sailed through the world guided only by the dim lights of impulse and habit, confident that his course would throw up no obstacles so large that they could not be plowed over with sheer force of momentum.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Source: The Secret History

World, Confidence, Light

“Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.”

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) American photographer, musician, writer and film director

Life

“Someone had to do something sometime. Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.”

Joseph Heller book Catch-22

Source: Catch-22

“You'd think that in a fight, NOT MOVING would be a bad habit!”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Thinking, Fight

“Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Happiness

“Sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.”

Herman Melville book Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs

Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs (1854)

Housing

“People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.”

Richard Russo book Mohawk

Source: Mohawk

People

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

Harvey Mackay (1932) American businessman and journalist

“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Reading

“The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. It will be present to you when the energies of your body have fallen away from you. It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
Variant: The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Pleasure, Support, Reading