Quotes about habit
page 7

André Maurois photo

“Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Quoted in The Aging American
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Growing Old

John Smith (explorer) photo

“Heaven & earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation; were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountaines, hils, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running most pleasantly into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitfull and delightsome land.”

John Smith (explorer) (1580–1631) Admiral of New England, was an English soldier, explorer, and author

Describing the countryside around Chesapeake Bay (1606); reported in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (1907), vol. 2, pp. 44–45.

Helen Hayes photo

“One has to grow up with good talk in order to form the habit of it.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

A Gift of Joy (with Lewis Funke, 1965), p. 11

“I liked movies so much that they became an obsession. I am still trying to kick the habit.”

Christoffer Boe (1974) Danish filmmaker

Quoted in Christoffer Boe: "I liked movies so much that they became an obsession. I am still trying to kick the habit," http://www.indiewire.com/article/park_city_06_christoffer_boe_i_liked_movies_so_much_that_they_became_an_obs/ interview with indieWIRE (January 11, 2006)

Yoji Shinkawa photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Adam Smith photo
Imre Kertész photo
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Joseph Kosuth photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Frank Chodorov photo
Robert Hall photo
Jean de La Bruyère photo

“Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.”

La critique souvent n'est pas une science; c'est un métier, où il faut plus de santé que d'esprit, plus de travail que de capacité, plus d'habitude que de génie. Si elle vient d'un homme qui ait moins de discernement que de lecture, et qu'elle s'exerce sur de certains chapitres, elle corrompt et les lecteurs et l'écrivain.
Aphorism 63
Les Caractères (1688), Des Ouvrages de l'Esprit

Peter Kropotkin photo
Jack Osbourne photo

“Kelly has a rather bad habit of interrupting.”

Jack Osbourne (1985) Son of Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne

Attributed

Bill Clinton photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Harry Johnston photo

“Iceland, though it lies so far to the north that it is partly within the Arctic Circle, is, like Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, affected by the Gulf Stream, so that considerable portions of it are quite habitable.”

Harry Johnston (1858–1927) British explorer, botanist, linguist and colonial administrator

Pioneers in Canada (1912) http://www.fullbooks.com/Pioneers-in-Canada1.html

Anthony Trollope photo

“You can never teach them, except by the slow lesson of habit.”

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 12

Koichi Tohei photo
Evelyn Underhill photo
Javier Marías photo

“Fidelity (the name given to the constancy and exclusivity with which one particular sex organ penetrates or is penetrated by another particular sex organ, or abstains from being penetrated by or from penetrating others) is mainly the product of habit, as is its so-called opposite, infidelity (the name given to inconstancy and change, and the enjoyment of more than one sex organ).”

Javier Marías (1951) Spanish writer

La fidelidad (lo que así se llama para referirse a la constancia y exclusividad con que un determinado sexo penetra o es penetrado por otro igualmente determinado, o se abstiene de ser penetrado o penetrar en otros) es producto de la costumbre principalmente, como lo es también la llamada—contrariamente— infidelidad (la inconstancia y alternación y el abarcamiento de más de un sexo).
Source: Todas las Almas [All Souls] (1989), p. 122

John Armstrong photo
George Biddell Airy photo
William Hazlitt photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to his son, Webb Hayes (26 February 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Frederick William Robertson photo

“It is more true to say that our opinions depend upon our lives and habits than to say that our lives depend upon our opinions, which is only now and then true.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 440.

Rollo May photo
John Adams photo

“The invasion of Georgia and South Carolina is the first. But why should the invasion of these two States affect the credit of the thirteen, more than the invasion of any two others? Massachusetts and Rhode Island have been invaded by armies much more formidable. New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, have been all invaded before. But what has been the issue? Not conquest, not submission. On the contrary, all those States have learned the art of war and the habits of submission to military discipline, and have got themselves well armed, nay, clothed and furnished with a great deal of hard money by these very invasions. And what is more than all the rest, they have got over the fears and terrors that are always occasioned by a first invasion, and are a worse enemy than the English; and besides, they have had such experience of the tyranny and cruelty of the English as have made them more resolute than ever against the English government. Now, why should not the invasion of Georgia and Carolina have the same effects? It is very certain, in the opinion of the Americans themselves, that it will. Besides, the unexampled cruelty of Cornwallis has been enough to revolt even negroes; it has been such as will make the English objects of greater horror there than in any of the other States.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

Letter to Baron Van Der Capellen (21 January 1781), Amsterdam. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2105#lf1431-07_head_239
1780s

James Fenimore Cooper photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax photo
George Eliot photo

“Do we not wile away moments of inanity or fatigued waiting by repeating some trivial movement or sound, until the repetition has bred a want, which is incipient habit?”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Source: Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe (1861), Chapter 2 (at page 19)

Walter Scott photo
Joseph Strutt photo

“In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day.”

Joseph Strutt (1749–1802) British engraver, artist, antiquary and writer

pg. 345
The Sports and Pastimes of the People of England (1801), Festival of Fools

“Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.”

V.S. Pritchett (1900–1997) British writer and critic

Vol. 2, Ch. 6
Midnight Oil (1971)

Alan Keyes photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Max Brod photo
Charles Dickens photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo
Charles Darwin photo
Bill Hybels photo
Clement Attlee photo

“…nothing short of a world state will be really effective in preventing war. As long as you rely for security on a number of national armaments you will have the difficulty as to who shall bell the cat in case of need, while you will have general staffs in all countries planning future wars. I want us to come out boldly for a real long-range policy which will envisage the abolition of the conception of the individual sovereign state. … A united navy to police the seas of the world could be attained and would incidentally bring enormous pressure to bear on Japan. The next thing would be an international air force and an international air service. … The basis of such a move would have to be a frank recognition that all states must surrender a large degree of sovereignty and that the Peace Treaties must be revised. On this basis one must then proceed to build up a world structure politically and economically. … This may sound very visionary but I am convinced that unless we see the world we want it is vain to try to build a permanent habitation for Peace and that temporary structures will catch fire very soon if we wait any longer.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to Tom Attlee (1 January 1933), quoted in W. Golant, 'The Emergence of C. R. Attlee as Leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party in 1935', The Historical Journal, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jun., 1970), p. 323
Deputy Leader of the Opposition

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Theodore Dalrymple photo

“And the fact is that millions of opiates addicts having given up their habit without medical assistance.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

C-SPAN: Romancing Opiates https://www.c-span.org/video/?191384-1/romancing-opiates (May 30, 2006)

Jonah Goldberg photo

“There was an NPR story this morning, about the indigenous peoples of Australia, which might make a good column. Apparently they want to preserve their culture, language, and religion because they're slowly disappearing, which is certainly understandable. But, for some reason, they also want more stuff — better education, housing, etc. — from the Australian government. Isn't it odd that it never occurs to such groups that maybe, just maybe, the reason their cultures are evaporating is that they get too much of that stuff already? Indeed, I'm at a loss as to how mastering algebra and biology will make aboriginal kids more likely to believe — oh, I dunno — that hallucinogenic excretions from a frog have spiritual value. And I'm at a loss as to how better clinics and hospitals will do anything but make the shamans and medicine men look more useless. And now that I think about it, that's the point I was trying to get at a few paragraphs ago, when I was talking about the symbiotic relationship between freedom and the hurly-burly of life. Cultures grow on the vine of tradition. These traditions are based on habits necessary for survival, and day-to-day problem solving. Wealth, technology, and medicine have the power to shatter tradition because they solve problems.”

Jonah Goldberg (1969) American political writer and pundit

( August 15, 2001 http://web.archive.org/web/20010105/www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg081501.shtml)
2000s, 2001

William Langland photo
Jean Froissart photo

“This John Ball had the habit on Sundays after mass, when everyone was coming out of church, of going to the cloisters or the graveyard, assembling the people round him and preaching thus: "Good people, things cannot go right in England and never will, until goods are held in common and there are no more villeins and gentlefolk, but we are all one and the same."”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Cils Jehan Balle http://aballedemeufs.over-blog.com/ avoit eut d'usage que, les jours dou diemence après messe, quant toutes les gens issoient hors dou moustier, il s'en venoit en l'aitre et là praiechoit et faissoit le peuple assambler autour de li, et leur dissoit: "Bonnes gens, les coses ne poent bien aler en Engletière ne iront jusques à tant que li bien iront tout de commun et que il ne sera ne villains ne gentils homs, que nous ne soions tout ouni."
Book 2, p. 212.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

Freeman Dyson photo
James Braid photo

“…during a period in history psychology was still a branch of academic philosophy. The psychological concepts developed by philosophers of mind, such as “dominant ideas” (akin to the automatic thoughts of Beck’s cognitive therapy) “habit and association” (a subjective precursor of Pavlovian conditioning), and “imitation and sympathy” (which we now call “role-modelling” and “empathy”), are repeatedly mentioned by Braid as the theoretical framework upon which his science of hypnotism, “neuro-hypnology”, was built. Braid’s friend and collaborator, Prof. William B. Carpenter, discusses the theoretical principles of this in his Principles of Mental Physiology (1889), especially in the chapter ‘Of Common Sense’ which concludes by quoting an approving letter from the philosopher John Stuart Mill sent to Carpenter in 1872. Mill agrees with Carpenter’s contention that “common sense”, by which he means a kind of intellectual intuition analogous to the ancient Greek concept of nous, is a combination of innate and acquired judgements, which have a “reflexive” or “automatic” quality and appear to consciousness as “self-evident” truths.”

James Braid (1795–1860) Scottish surgeon, hypnotist, and hypnotherapist

James Braid, in The Original Philosophy of Hypnotherapy (from The Discovery of Hypnosis) http://ukhypnosis.wordpress.com/category/james-braid-the-founder-of-hypnotherapy/page/2/.

William Hazlitt photo
Mario Vargas Llosa photo
Charles Sanders Peirce photo

“The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just that; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either —
# That this, that, or the other, is wine; or,
# That wine possesses certain properties.
Such beliefs are nothing but self-notifications that we should, upon occasion, act in regard to such things as we believe to be wine according to the qualities which we believe wine to possess. The occasion of such action would be some sensible perception, the motive of it to produce some sensible result. Thus our action has exclusive reference to what affects the senses, our habit has the same bearing as our action, our belief the same as our habit, our conception the same as our belief; and we can consequently mean nothing by wine but what has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon our senses; and to talk of something as having all the sensible characters of wine, yet being in reality blood, is senseless jargon. Now, it is not my object to pursue the theological question; and having used it as a logical example I drop it, without caring to anticipate the theologian's reply. I only desire to point out how impossible it is that we should have an idea in our minds which relates to anything but conceived sensible effects of things. Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible effects; and if we fancy that we have any other we deceive ourselves, and mistake a mere sensation accompanying the thought for a part of the thought itself. It is absurd to say that thought has any meaning unrelated to its only function. It is foolish for Catholics and Protestants to fancy themselves in disagreement about the elements of the sacrament, if they agree in regard to all their sensible effects, here or hereafter.
It appears, then, that the rule for attaining the third grade of clearness of apprehension is as follows: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist

The final sentence here is an expression of what became known as the Pragmatic maxim, first published in "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12 (January 1878), p. 286

Colin Wilson photo
African Spir photo
Paul Bourget photo
Otis Redding photo

“There were times and you want to be free
My love is growing stronger, as you become a habit to me.
Oh I've been loving you a little too long
I don't wanna stop now, oh.
With you my life,
Has been so wonderful.
I can't stop now.”

Otis Redding (1941–1967) American singer, songwriter and record producer

I've Been Loving You Too Long, co-written with Jerry Butler.
Song lyrics, Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965)

Annie Besant photo
William Cobbett photo
Frank McCourt photo
Tallulah Bankhead photo

“Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know — I've been using it for years.”

Tallulah Bankhead (1902–1968) American actress

Tallulah: My Autobiography (1952)

G. K. Chesterton photo
Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. photo

“Process-chart notes and information should be collected and set down in sketch form by a highly intelligent man, preferably with an engineering training and experience, but who need not necessarily have been previously familiar with the actual details of the processes. In fact, the unbiased eye of an intelligent and experienced process-chart maker usually brings better results than does the study of a less keen man with more special information regarding present practices of the processes. The mere act of investigating sufficiently to make the notes in good enough condition for the draftsman to copy invariably results in many ideas and suggestions for improvement, and all of these suggestions, good and bad, should be retained and filed together with the description of the process chart. These suggestions and proposed improvements must be later explained to others, such as boards of directors, managers and foremen, and for best results also to certain workmen and clerks who have special craft or process knowledge. To overcome the obstacles due to habit, worship of tradition and prejudice, the more intelligence shown by the process-chart recorder, the sooner hearty cooperation of all concerned will be secured. Anyone can make this form of process chart with no previous experience in making such charts, but the more experience one has in making them, the more certain standard combinations of operations, inspection and transporting can be transferred bodily to advantage to the charts of proposed processes.”

Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Sr. (1868–1924) American industrial engineer

Source: Process charts (1921), p. 5-6.

Ken MacLeod photo
Ann Coulter photo
Leonard Wibberley photo

“I think women should make a habit of canceling the wars.”

Leonard Wibberley (1915–1983) Irish-American author

Source: The Mouse that Roared, p. 145.

Marshall McLuhan photo
Richard Cobden photo
James Braid photo
Albert Camus photo

“We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.”

The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning

John Ruysbroeck photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
John Ruskin photo
Pappus of Alexandria photo

“He [Apollonius of Perga] spent a very long time with the pupils of Euclid at Alexandria, and it was thus that he acquired such a scientific habit of thought.”

Pappus of Alexandria (290–350) Greek mathematician of Antiquity

Source: The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908), Ch. 1, p.2

John Singer Sargent photo
Henry Adams photo
John Dos Passos photo

“In the last twenty-five years a change has come over the visual habits of Americans... From being a wordminded people we are becoming an eyeminded people.”

John Dos Passos (1896–1970) novelist, playwright, poet, journalist, painter

"Grosz Comes to America," Esquire, 1936

Jair Bolsonaro photo

“Over time, due to liberal habit, drugs, women also working, the number of homosexuals has really increased. I also tend to say if your son starts hanging out with certain people with a certain behavior, he'll adopt that sort of behavior. He'll think it's normal.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Interview to Ellen Page in March 2016. "Você foge a normalidade", diz Jair Bolsonaro a Ellen Page https://www.opovo.com.br/noticias/brasil/2016/03/voce-foge-a-normalidade-diz-jair-bolsonaro-a-ellen-page.html. O Povo (11 March 2016).

John of St. Samson photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Robert Owen photo
William Mulock photo

“I'm not in the habit of looking back - I leave that till I get old.”

William Mulock (1843–1944) Canadian politician, judge, academic administrator

On his 100th birthday, reported in [The Broadview Book of Canadian Anecdotes, Broadview Press, 1988, Peterborough, Fethering, Douglas, 131, 978-0921149293]