habits Quotes

“I’ve come to believe that creativity is the mechanism that allows learning to seep into our being and become practice. The Asaro tribe of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea has a beautiful saying: ‘Knowledge is only a rumor until it lives in the muscle.’”

“Our thoughts become our words, our words become our beliefs, our beliefs become our actions, our actions become our habits, and our habits become our realities.”

“It’s so easy that when you begin you can’t stop. You just go on and on doing it always.”

“It was my wish that our sons should cultivate a habit of bold independence, for I well knew that it might easily be the will of God to deprive them of their parents; when, without an enterprising spirit of self reliance, their position would be truly miserable.”

“Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out the window.”

Phileas Fogg, having shut the door of his house at half-past eleven, and having put his right foot before his left five hundred and seventy-five times, and his left foot before his right five hundred and seventy-six times, reached the Reform Club.

“Ah, love may be strong, but a habit is stronger, And I knew when I loved by the way I behaved.”

“Our happiness or unhappiness depends to an important degree upon the habit of mind we cultivate.”

“impure thoughts of every kind crystallize into enervating and confusing habits, which solidify into distracting and adverse circumstances: thoughts of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence: lazy thoughts crystallize into habits of uncleanliness and dishonesty, which solidify into circumstances of foulness and beggary: hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution: selfish thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of self-seeking, which solidify into circumstances more or less distressing. On the other hand, beautiful thoughts of all kinds crystallize into habits of grace and kindliness, which solidify into genial and sunny circumstances: pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace: thoughts of courage, self-reliance, and decision crystallize into manly habits, which solidify into circumstances of success, plenty, and freedom: energetic thoughts crystallize into habits of cleanliness and industry, which solidify into circumstances of pleasantness:”

“We become what we repeatedly do.”

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us. -ENGLISH POET.”

“Abandon anything about your life and habits that might be holding you back, Learn to create your own opportunities. Know that there is no finish line; fortune favors action.”

“Ironically, some of our most stubborn habits and disorders are products of our plasticity.”

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

″We will define a habit as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. Knowledge is the theoretical paradigm, the what to do and the why. Skill is the how to do. And desire is the motivation, the want to do. In order to make something a habit in our lives, we have to have all three.″

“For years now I’ve kind of operated under an informal shopping cycle. A bit like a farmer’s crop rotation system. Except, instead of wheat, maize, barley, and fallow, mine pretty much goes clothes, makeup shoes, and clothes (I don’t bother with fallow). Shopping is actually very similar to farming a field. You can’t keep buying the same thing, you have to have a bit of variety. Otherwise you get bored and stop enjoying yourself.”

“‘Is that me?’ Ekwefi called back. That was the way people answered calls from outside. They never answered yes for fear it might be an evil spirit calling.”

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

“For one who has made thanksgiving the habit of his life, the morning prayer will be, ‘Lord, what will you give me today to offer back to you?‘”

“It is always possible to be thankful for what is given rather than to complain about what is not given. One or the other becomes a habit of life.”

“Look again, and see what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and disabused of their error. At first, when any of them is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn his neck round and walk and look towards the light, he will suffer sharp pains; the glare will distress him, and he will be unable to see the realities of which in his former state he had seen the shadows; and then conceive some one saying to him, that what he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when he is approaching nearer to being and his eye is turned towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision,—what will be his reply?”

“When you first hear that suffering is a Noble Truth, you might wonder what’s so noble about suffering? The Buddha was saying that if we can recognize suffering, and if we embrace it and look deeply into its roots, then we’ll be able to let go of the habits that feed it and at the same time, find a way to happiness. Suffering has its beneficial aspects. It can be a an excellent teacher.”

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

“The last thing I need is rest. I need to find something to fill my days. I know what’s going to happen if I don’t.”

“Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner.”

“The good-to-great companies made a habit of putting their best people on their best opportunities, not their biggest problems.”

“An ugly man, with a face sharp like a weasel and a habit of running a flickering tongue over his lips before he speaks. But most ugly of all are his eyes: blue, bright blue. When people see them, they flinch. Such things are freakish. He is lucky he was not killed at birth.”

“The real cost of a four-dollar-a-day coffee habit over 20 years is $51,833.79. That’s the power of the Compound Effect.”

“Step by step, day by day, your choices will shape your actions until they become habits where practice makes them permanent.”

“A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else.”

“The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

“At first the fact of being cut off from the outside world was accepted with a more or less good grace, much as people would have put up with any other temporary inconvenience that interfered with only a few of their habits. But, now they had abruptly become aware that they were undergoing a sort of incarceration.”

“You may try to change the direction of your own flow in certain areas of your life—your eating habits, the way you work, the way you relate to others, the way you treat yourself, the attitudes you have about life. And you may even succeed for a time.”

“But eventually you will find you return to your original behavior and attitudes. This is because your life is determined, insofar as it is a law of nature for you, to take the path of least resistance.”

“The universe does not have laws. It has habits. And habits can be broken.”

“Habit will be your champion. When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.”

Sutra II.15: Parinama tapa samskara duhkhaih guna vrtti virodhaccha duhkham evam sarvam vivekinah Translation: Change, longing, habits, and the activity of the gunas can all cause us suffering. In fact, even the wise suffer, for suffering is everywhere.

“A habit is something you do so often you don’t even have to think about it. Habits are a very important part of our lives. And most of them are good- like brushing your teeth and combing your fur when you get up in the morning, and looking both ways before crossing the road. But some habits aren’t so good.”

“But worst of all, the bits of tape told the whole world that Sister Bear was a nail biter.”

“In regular school you have to concentrate- and sometimes when you concentrate, you form nervous little habits. ”

“And Sister nibbled her nails. Nibble, nibble, nibble, nibble.”

“The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.”

“Happiness, like anger, is also a habit. You learn to be happy one day at a time. But habits change hard.”

“People do not decide their futures, they decide their habits and their habits decide their futures.”

“I write down what I observe in my notebooks. I do this for two reasons. The first is that Writing inculcates habits of precision and carefulness. The second is to preserve whatever knowledge I possess for you, the Sixteenth Person.”

“Make an affirmation immediately upon waking. For example: “Thy will be done this day! Today is a day of completion, I give thanks for this perfect day, miracle shall follow miracle and wonders shall never cease.” Make this a habit, and one will see wonders and miracles come into his life.”

“Some of us come from families where we were not taught healthy emotional language and habits. We did not get a balanced perspective of the world and relationships, and some of us got a distorted view of where we stood in relation to the rest of the world. We felt (and many of us still do) less than. In order to make up for that, we learned to exaggerate and lie and blow our accomplishments way out of proportion in order to feel of some value. To succeed, we have to stop thinking we are less than other people. We tell ourselves we are not unworthy, inadequate, or unable to cope fully with life’s problems. We begin to see the glass as half full instead of half empty. We have to get rid of feelings of inability before we can make progress. As we learn more about how false pride has held us back from our full potential, we remember, “If we change our thoughts, we can change ourselves.”

“I was winding it up one night, when suddenly it gave a little gasp and a long sigh, like a soul departing from the body; and it wouldn’t go after that. Sometimes, from force of habit, I take it out at night and start to wind it. Then I miss its genial tick, and I feel as if I am looking at the face of a dead friend.”

“And so the original water fear was born with Tarka, whose mind had to overlay a weak instinct with habit, just as his ancestors had done when he was hungry.”

“I gave up growing when I was extremely small, along with all the other nasty childish habits like laziness and disobedience and greed and sloppiness and untidiness and stupidity.”

“Your outcomes are a lagging measure of your habits.”

“Achieving a goal only changes your life for the moment. We think we need to change our results, but the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.”

Religion for her was a habit and she suspected that a man of her husband’s age would not change greatly before death.

To my unutterable amazement, I now, for the first time, saw Mr. Pocket relieve his mind by going through a performance that struck me as very extraordinary, but which made no impression on anybody else, and with which I soon became as familiar as the rest. He laid down the carving-knife and fork,—being engaged in carving, at the moment,—put his two hands into his disturbed hair, and appeared to make an extraordinary effort to lift himself up by it. When he had done this, and had not lifted himself up at all, he quietly went on with what he was about.

“I never could get over the habit of speaking my mind.”