Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Habit Quotes from famous authors such as Emil Cioran, Shigeru Miyamoto, Sydney Smith, Alphonse de Lamartine, Satyajit Ray. Let’s look at these pieces of wisdom. We definitely have something to learn from them!
1
Negation is the mind’s first freedom, yet a negative habit is fruitful only so long as we exert ourselves to overcome it, adapt it to our needs; once acquired it can imprison us.
2
Japanese people have a funny habit of abbreviating names.
3
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
4
Habit with it’s iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.
5
I had developed this habit of writing scenarios as a hobby. I would find out which stories had been sold to be made into films and I would write my own treatment and then compare it.
6
I just never, ever want to give up. Most battles are won in the 11th hour, and most people give up. If you give up once, it’s quite hard. If you give up a second time, it’s a little bit easier. Give up a third time, it’s starting to become a habit.
7
It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.
8
You have to forgive me because I have a habit of not winning things.
9
Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men.
10
I have got into the habit of gyming regularly.
11
Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.
12
I don’t have a BlackBerry or whatever you call it. And there is something to be said for being isolated and out of phone range, because you can fall into a habit to such a degree that you don’t even realise that you’ve lost something: silence.
13
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
14
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
15
The constant assumption runs throughout the law that the natural and spontaneous evolutions of habit fix the limits of right and wrong.
16
I got in the habit of giving away a book as soon as I’ve finished it because I lived in a housing co-op at Cambridge and had no space to keep books.
17
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
18
Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.
19
Winning is a habit.
20
I think, first of all, you know, Washington has a bad habit of a very short attention span.
21
I’m hesitant to ascribe too much to luck because I think women have a bad habit of doing that. At the same time, there’s no question that I entered the market at the right moment.
22
The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.
23
In our urge to automate, in our eagerness to adopt the latest innovations, we appear to have developed a habit of unthinkingly handing over power to machines.
24
I’m a creature of habit. I don’t really like change.
25
Man is not imprisoned by habit. Great changes in him can be wrought by crisis – once that crisis can be recognized and understood.
26
I grew out of the habit of thinking or worrying about being seen as the typical Asian. I don’t even know what that means anymore. I’m not really concerned with it.
27
I always say, ‘I love producing, but directing is my passion,’ and for a while, I had to produce to support my directing habit.
28
By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
29
I make it a habit of never trying to judge what an audience might think, only because all points of view are too close, because we’re doing it every day, I think that the actor’s point of view is sometimes too close to what the material actually is.
30
My family had a habit of collecting creatures that didn’t always want to be pets. The first animal I can remember was a Lab named Zoe.
31
Must swear off from swearing. Bad habit.
32
Government has a habit of blaming the private sector for its own failings while taking credit for advances we in fact owe to the private sector.
33
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.
34
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
35
I got into this little habit of architecture and building. I designed a house in Colorado and one in Hawaii. The idea is supposed to be build and sell – but then I can never bring myself to sell them.
36
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.
37
My worst habit used to be smoking but I quit.
38
As a kid, I didn’t have a shower at home, and I was used to taking bucket baths, so I went back to that old habit.
39
Podcast listening, much like radio listening, is largely a question of habit. And the most powerful habits are the ones that fit into our daily routine.
40
There was a time when I restored antique planes to support my art habit.
41
Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving and identity.
42
Acquire the habit of speaking to God as if you were alone with Him, familiarly and with confidence and love, as to the dearest and most loving of friends.
43
As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.
44
Until you have formed the habit of looking for the good instead of the bad there is in others, you will be neither successful nor happy.
45
I will make utmost efforts to conduct regulatory reform by tearing down bureaucratic sectionalism, vested interests and notorious habit of following precedents.
46
It’s an unhealthy habit to say that life is what you make of it, and if you want to be happy, then you can be happy. That’s just rubbish, basically.
47
I don’t analyze what I’m doing. I’ve read convincing interpretations of my work, and sometimes I’ve noticed something that I wasn’t aware of, but I think, at this point, people read into my work out of habit. Or I’m just very, very smart.
48
Investing is a virtuous habit best started as early as possible.
49
I went into acting because I was hiding from myself, and although acting has become more of a habit now, I think I am still hiding.
50
It is hard to get in the habit of forcing yourself to find three things on a regular basis that you are grateful for.
51
The habit of begging, that plague of tourist resorts, is an incessant nuisance on the Alhambra hill.
52
I finally realized that yeah I did want to be an actor and it wasn’t out of habit, but I needed to grow up for myself and then kind of re-enter the industry with a sound understanding of what my sensibilities and my values are as a relatively formed human being.
53
When I was growing up, there wasn’t too much technology. There weren’t so many channels that we were glued to on TV. We had to go outside and create our games. Kids had the habit of being active and exercising, just enjoying the fresh air.
54
I loved playing cricket from my childhood. My dad made me play in the streets, and my interest grew. He put me in a club, seeing this. My habit grew from that point.
55
Both my parents were keen golfers and Dad was such a creature of habit that he didn’t see much of me at Ayr United because he always played a round on Saturdays. He was an old-school parent of his time and I’ve no complaints.
56
Quality is not an act, it is a habit.
57
We have a habit of turning to scientists when we want factual answers and artists when we want entertainment, but where are the facts about the nature of the self? Neurologists peering at PET scans and fMRIs know they aren’t seeing the soul in there.
58
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
59
Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.
60
I regularly take my entrepreneurship students out walking because I want to get them in the habit of noticing and thinking about what they notice. They have to leave their phones behind to learn the basic lesson: Be where you are.
61
I’ve been curious about certain things, but didn’t let them get in the way of my life. I don’t know how people becoem successful with some kind of habit.
62
Once you break a habit into its components, you can fiddle with the gears.
63
I think the most important healthy habit is to rest. Eight hours… every night.
64
Humans are animals of habit – they convince themselves they can’t change. And that premise is wrong.
65
I’m pretty OCD. I like to fine-tune every single detail. I think that’s a habit built maybe from me being OCD.
66
Observe yourself as you go through a typical day. Stuff happens to you. As it does, you immediately judge it and label it. Dozens of times. Hundreds of times. So often that you no longer recognize that you’re doing it. It is a deep-seated habit.
67
Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.
68
Probably my worst habit is, when I get really stressed out, down to the wire, and Im trying to find clothes or find something, literally anything, I throw everything everywhere, and I dont pick it up because Im in that anxious space, still.
69
When most individuals or most companies are talking about trying to create healthy habits, the key is to identify which habit or habits seem most important.
70
I’m a creature of habit.
71
Education is the methodical creation of the habit of thinking.
72
There is no influence like the influence of habit.
73
Being on the losing end of perfect games sucks. I tried not to make a habit of it during my career, but I couldn’t help myself.
74
I am disciplined and tend to stick to my workout regime and eating habit and adhere to them strictly.
75
I’ve never been to a festival. I’m a creature of habit, mashed-potato comfort, I like rugs. Our sofa’s squishy. Maybe too squishy – it’s hard to get up sometimes.
76
I have a habit of getting very obsessive about one thing, but it usually lasts no more than three days.
77
Once you get into the habit of work, you can be more productive in the things you want to do.
78
I find that reading is a super important habit. It’s one of the best ways to get centered, to find a new tool to play with, or to experiment with a new idea.
79
The reason why Broken Men only became Untouchables was because in addition to being Buddhists, they retained their habit of beef-eating, which gave additional ground for offence to the Brahmins to carry their new-found love and reverence to the cow to its logical conclusion.
80
Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
81
Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
82
I have this horrible, horrible habit of going on YouTube and checking out comments about what I do.
83
Imagine life without any algorithms at all, you wouldn’t be able to do anything. This is already completely encompassing. We have a habit of over-trusting what mathematics or computer scientists tell us to do, without questioning it, too much faith in the magical power of analysis.
84
My worst habit is opening the fridge and thinking: ‘I’d like to eat something.’
85
You can’t suddenly say, ‘I want a brand new habit tomorrow,’ and expect it to be easy and effortless.
86
I suppose if you’ve never bitten your nails, there isn’t any way to explain the habit. It’s not enjoyable, really, but there is a certain satisfaction – pride in a job well done.
87
It’s not my habit to kiss and tell. I’ve never done it.
88
Habit is a great deadener.
89
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
90
I try not to make a habit of spending the whole year losing in the first rounds of events, but tennis is one of those sports where nothing is guaranteed.
91
Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.
92
Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
93
Men even contract the dirty, filthy habit of chewing tobacco, and when the habit gets a good hold upon them they are never satisfied except when they have a wad of the stuff in their mouth. So with drinking. It is largely a habit.
94
How did a prairie-dwelling, red-meat-eating, gun-toting former conservative become the hope of liberal radio? It all started with this annoying habit I have of speaking my mind.
95
Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.
96
As soon as I go into a dark subject, like discussing the people I’ve loved and lost, I off-road into absurdist comedy perversion. It’s both a means of protection and a kind of denial, a blessing and a curse. Wait, it’s not a blessing at all. I guess it would be a bad habit and a curse.
97
Common sense is the most fairly distributed thing in the world, for each one thinks he is so well-endowed with it that even those who are hardest to satisfy in all other matters are not in the habit of desiring more of it than they already have.
98
I make a habit of asking myself, ‘Is there purpose to this meeting or conversation? Do I want to build a relationship with this person or company? Is there purpose behind this meeting that aligns with my life and business strategy?’ If the answer is ‘No,’ then I pass every time.
99
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
100
Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
101
Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
102
I’ve been into the habit of freezing white grapes and using them as a snack. Instead of eating peanuts or popcorn or something like that or pretzels, I just eat the white grapes.
103
Habit is the nursery of errors.
104
I can’t sit around doing nothing. If I’m not working, I have a habit of becoming rather insular.
105
I’ve made it a habit not to burn any bridges.
106
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.
107
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
108
I think Hollywood has a habit of developing 100 times more than they actually shoot.
109
Failure is only postponed success as long as courage ‘coaches’ ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
110
My own nature hovers between neurotic and paranoid. I’ve developed the habit of mentally listing things that make me optimistic about the future. I do it every day.
111
If I allow the fact that I am a Negro to checkmate my will to do, now, I will inevitably form the habit of being defeated.
112
After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.
113
Winners make a habit of manufacturing their own positive expectations in advance of the event.
114
The causes for my eating disorder ran along the usual lines: depression, an inability to express my rage, a desire to exert control, a desire to feel less, a desire to have my body express the things my voice could not. That, and I had gotten in the habit of believing it was better to take up less space.
115
I can’t explain something I saw on holiday on Holy Island when I was about nine years old, but do you know what, it could have been my PE teacher dressed in a monk’s habit. I have no idea. I’m not a ghost person… it doesn’t mean there aren’t unexplained things; I just don’t think they’re ghosts.
116
I come from an army background, and everyone at my home has a habit of getting up early. I continue this habit even today.
117
Clothes are a kind of uniform. A nun’s habit, a surgeon’s scrubs, a cop’s uniform. People often say that when they put on a certain uniform, they actually think of themselves differently.
118
My worst habit in the kitchen is not allowing anybody to help me. I like to cook by myself.
119
I’ve found that I snack less and concentrate better when I chew on a plastic stirrer – the kind that you get to stir your to-go coffee. I picked up this habit from my husband, who loves to chew on things. His favorite chew-toy is a plastic pen top, and gnawed pen tops and little bits of plastic litter our apartment.
120
I still have this habit, I guess, continued from college, where I procrastinate up until the last moment.
121
The real key is to live in an environment where the mind feels free to choose the right thing instead of being compelled by habit and inertia to choose the wrong thing.
122
I kind of peak at how far I can push my body, and then I run out of determination for the habit and start easing off. It’s really just a lack of focus and discipline.
123
Habit allows us to go from ‘before’ to ‘after,’ to make life easier and better. Habit is notorious – and rightly so – for its ability to direct our actions, even against our will; but by mindfully shaping our habits, we can harness the power of mindlessness as a sweeping force for serenity, energy, and growth.
124
I’m a man of habit.
125
The worst mistake of first contact, made throughout history by individuals on both sides of every new encounter, has been the unfortunate habit of making assumptions. It often proved fatal.
126
Once you break someone of the habit of up-talking, they can start to see immediate improvement in their careers.
127
My writing has to support more than my research habit, but I love to curl up with a book about some dusty corner of history.
128
Character is long-standing habit.
129
The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.
130
One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.
131
Positivity is like a muscle: keep exercising it, and it becomes a habit.
132
Habit is ten times nature.
133
Where nationally televised news had been a once-nightly ritual, it has since grown into a 24-hour-a-day habit, available on channels devoted entirely and ceaselessly to its dissemination.
134
Aim to write for an hour per day. I used to be a teacher, and an hour a day before school was all it took for me to write my first book. Don’t get discouraged if a holiday or illness interrupts your writing habit. Just start it up again.
135
As you may possibly have noticed from time to time, I have tended to make a habit of sticking my head above the parapet and generally getting it shot off for pointing out what has always been blindingly obvious to me.
136
The discovery of the habit loop is important because it reveals a basic truth: When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks.
137
I’m a creature of habit and tend to favour small, traditional English businesses.
138
My most annoying habit is laughing all the time. I can’t stop giggling. I do it because I’m nervous.
139
For eleven months and maybe about twenty days each year, we concentrate upon the shortcomings of others, but for a few days at the turn of the New Year we look at our own. It is a good habit.
140
My habit is to get real competitive and make racing probably more work than it is enjoyable, and I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I feel like there’s pressure from the outside – it’s probably not real, but it’s something I imagine.
141
So much of our lives are defined by habit or what the guy next to us is doing, never wondering and knowing who and what we support with our actions, from the detergent Mom always used, to my favorite dish I make… A lot of my life is unexamined habit.
142
When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy. There had never before been any star in that place in the sky.
143
The moment you feel yourself hesitate on something you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1 to activate your prefrontal cortex and interrupt the habit of overthinking, self-doubt, and fear.
144
Pierre Curie came to see me and showed a simple and sincere sympathy with my student life. Soon he caught the habit of speaking to me of his dream of an existence consecrated entirely to scientific research, and he asked me to share that life.
145
The people I coach are very successful people, so it’s very hard for winners to not constantly win. Even if it’s trivial and not worth it, we still want to win – because we love winning. It’s a very deep habit.
146
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition, is not only a waste of energy but the worst habit you could possibly have.
147
When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.
148
I used to wear sweats and a T-shirt to auditions, but my agent would yell at me and tell me I had to look nice and presentable. So I had to drop that habit.
149
Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.
150
People get so in the habit of worry that if you save them from drowning and put them on a bank to dry in the sun with hot chocolate and muffins they wonder whether they are catching cold.
151
A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
152
I got into the habit of filtering out all the good in my life, focusing on only the negative. I’m not sure why I did it, but it’s a pretty depressing state.
153
The Touchables, whether they are vegetarians or flesh-eaters, are united in their objection to eat cow’s flesh. As against them stand the Untouchables, who eat cow’s flesh without compunction and as a matter of course and habit.
154
I had a bad habit of falling in love with any girl who was nice to me.
155
I knew I needed to workout for my sanity, and I try and make it a daily habit if I can, so I count myself very lucky that I have been able to keep doing that while pregnant.
156
I got into a habit really early about not talking about work, ever.
157
My worst habit is whistling while I sleep.
158
Typically, when there are corporate habits that undermine individuals, it has emerged without any sort of central planning. Nobody sits down and says, ‘I’m going to create an evil habit for this corporation.’
159
In high school, I had to hide my comic book side, my nerd side from the civilian world so they wouldn’t categorize me. They would try to marginalize me for what I like. I tried to give it up, believe me. I tried to kick the habit. But there’s too much I liked about it to give it up completely.
160
I’ve gotten into the habit of cranking out a set of push-ups before each show to get my blood pumping and find my focus. I worked my way up from eight to 30. That was a real accomplishment.
161
I am a creature of habit.
162
I’ve been in the habit of helping people.
163
I’m still not a great reader, but my wife is and my daughters are, and I envy them. I think I got into a bad habit of trying to do something all the time, instead of trying to sit down and take my time a little bit.
164
The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.
165
Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.
166
What is there so offensive to which habit has not the power to reconcile us?
167
Most people have a blank slate and can start from nothing. But for me, I had to break a bad habit that I’ve been doing all of my life, which is freestyle hip-hop.
168
To this day I always insist on working out a problem from the beginning without reading up on it first, a habit that sometimes gets me into trouble but just as often helps me see things my predecessors have missed.
169
Whenever we haven’t got enough information to make decisions for ourselves, we have a habit of copying the behaviour of those around us.
170
You don’t want to make a living or habit out of trying to solve your problems with high-price pitching free agents because over the long run, there’s so much risk involved that you really can hamstring your organization.
171
There is a woman named Wendy Wood, who did a study when she was at Duke, and she followed around college students to try to figure out how much of their day was decision-making versus how much was habit. And what she found was that about 45 percent of all the behaviors that someone did in a day was habit.
172
Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
173
I can’t stop biting my nails. It’s a bad habit of mine. I like anything to do with math and numbers. I know a lot of people don’t like geometry, but for me it’s fun.
174
I’ll do calf raises when I brush my teeth, I always take the stairs, and do squats on commercial breaks if I’m watching TV. It’s so easy and it has become my little habit.
175
Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.
176
Whenever I write anything, I do sing to it, to try and make sure it’s interesting or compelling to sing to. I’ve gotten in the habit of sharing that with other, more charismatic vocalists.
177
Even though it’s hard to learn how to back your car out the driveway at first, once it becomes a habit, you can do it almost automatically and think about something else, like the meeting that you need to go to today or what’s on the radio.
178
I’ll get in that habit of throwing the ball over the plate too much. You want to keep it going, get those guys back into the dugout. But it’s not a good thing when you’re over more than a third of the plate.
179
People should not expect the state to protect them from fraudsters. If we do, we get into the habit of neglecting our own powers of intellectual discernment.
180
We have this habit of romanticizing the lives of writers. I remember when I was a kid, I was like, ‘I want to be Kurt Vonnegut.’
181
When I was growing up, we had a widow living next door to us. So the habit was that if we went to the grocery store, we called her first. If we cut our yard, we cut her yard, no questions asked.
182
Heat of blood makes young people change their inclinations often, and habit makes old ones keep to theirs a great while.
183
I’m very controlling. It’s my worst habit. I’m also over organized, which means I end up telling my family what I want them to do at certain times, like when to get up, where to put their clothes and when they should have their breakfast.
184
Individual writers have different postures, different stances, even different physical attitudes as they stand or sit over their blank paper, and in a sense, without doing it, they are crossing themselves; I mean, it’s like the habit of Catholics going into water: you cross yourself before you go in.
185
Changing a habit or routine doesn’t happen overnight. It takes a little bit of time and may take easing into the change to make it work for you. Waking up earlier is no exception.
186
The DMK and the Communists may have the habit of lying, but I don’t come from a family that lies.
187
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.
188
I like writing, and I enjoy it. It’s painful. You can’t get around the pain of writing. I’m still trying to balance on what I think is my creative habit. It varies, but I do know that I need to continue. It helps me with my acting, and the writing helps me be invested in a different way.
189
We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.
190
I have a strange habit of walking down streets and staring up, rather than looking at shopfronts and stuff like that.
191
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
192
It’s not superstition, but I do everything exactly the same on game days. I’m a creature of habit. I eat the same breakfast, and then I drive the same way to practice. Then I come back and eat the same exact same lunch before every game.
193
I’d got into the habit of needing that security, love, and acceptance from a guy to make me happy.
194
I was conducted in the evening to a tavern where several of the weavers who advocate the principles of the People’s Charter were in the habit of assembling.
195
Make it your habit not to be critical about small things.
196
I smoke, I want to get rid of the habit.
197
You have to create a habit of finding the right positions and knowing where the ball’s going to bounce to.
198
Humans are creatures of habit. If you quit when things get tough, it gets that much easier to quit the next time. On the other hand, if you force yourself to push through it, the grit begins to grow in you.
199
If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.
200
Surfing the Internet every day has become a habit for many leaders and officials, including myself.
201
Writing became an obsessive compulsive habit but I had almost no money so I thought about being an urban firefighter and having lots of free time in which to write or becoming an English teacher and thinking about books and writers on a daily basis. That swayed me.
202
I grew up writing thank-you notes. Real, honest-to-goodness, pen-and-ink, stamped and posted letters. More than simple habit, it’s about what the commitment to expressing your thoughts and feelings in writing says about the character of the writer. About the joy such notes bring to the reader.
203
As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged – indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe’s long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.
204
Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.
205
It is to be observed that every case of war averted is a gain in general, for it helps to form a habit of peace, and community habits long continued become standards of conduct.
206
If the moral good of fiction stems mainly from a habit of mind it inculcates in the reader, styles are neither good nor bad, and to describe some fictional enterprises as false is pointless.
207
While I gave up God a long time ago, I never shook the habit of wanting to believe in something. So I replaced my creed of everlasting life with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
208
I know that for every reader who has lost the habit or can’t find the time, there are people who’ve never enjoyed reading and question the value of literature, either as entertainment or education, or believe that a love of books, and of fiction in particular, is sentimental or frivolous.
209
Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted.
210
I don’t like being in the limelight. It is not something extraordinary. It is just my habit.
211
I am a good boy. Sweet. I love to chill. I have a select set of friends, am big on house music, love Goa. I don’t read much. Though that is one habit I am trying to inculcate.
212
People aren’t religious because it’s easy not to be. Like anything, it’s habitual, and once it’s a habit it’s no longer hard.
213
The habit of collecting, of attachment to things, is an essential human trait. But Western civilization put collecting on a pedestal by inventing museums. Museums are about representing power. It could be the king’s power or, later, people’s power.
214
There is no influence like the influence of habit.
215
Hunger also changes the world – when eating can’t be a habit, then neither can seeing.
216
When I came out, and for many years afterwards, it had become a habit for me to sit and read and read and read, like an obsession. I would take 20 books, and not come out until I’d finished them. It took me a while to change that habit.
217
I’ve noticed people in India have developed a habit of hugging around people. I don’t understand it now. I wanted to be hugged when I was young. Now, if someone wants to hug me, I feel only claustrophobic.
218
My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.
219
At home in Ireland, there’s a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure.
220
Juventus are specialists because they have the habit to win and the habit to put pressure on the referee. It’s a club with a culture to try to do everything to help the team.
221
Culture is the habit of being pleased with the best and knowing why.
222
Americans cannot realize how many chances for mental improvement they lose by their inveterate habit of keeping six conversations when there are twelve in the room.
223
John McCain and Lindsay Graham have a habit of communicating with great passion and regularity. I have great respect for both individuals, but their style is not everyone’s style.
224
Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.
225
A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.
226
I have this habit of not rehearsing a lot; I don’t go on practicing my dialogues, pauses, and actions.
227
Falling head over heels in love with women was a habit I thought I’d thoroughly grown out of in middle school, when a group of about five girls and I color-coordinated our outfits and spent weekends and even some weeknights sprawled out in each others bedrooms.
228
President Johnson had a habit of throwing dollars at a question and the question would disappear.
229
I have developed a nasty habit of losing to the guy who wins the tournament, and that alone makes you think what you could have achieved.
230
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
231
Interrupting people mid-sentence is my worst habit. I cant help myself. I get overexcited in the middle of a conversation and I just butt in.
232
Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain.
233
My worst habit is probably that I’m extremely messy. I’m a big scatter-brain – I’m always losing my car keys, or worse, forgetting where I parked my car in the car park.
234
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
235
I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom – a learned habit, thanks to my learn-to-fly-calmly training – but like all former flying phobics, I retain a weird and feverish fascination with aviation news, especially bad news.
236
Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit.
237
Procrastinating is a habit that I have to overcome.
238
Procrastination is probably my worst habit out of many. Especially when it comes to paperwork.
239
Also, because schools must teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of helping others around you, every class should have this rule: students, if you bring software to class you may not keep it for yourself.
240
To read the Bible is of itself a laudable occupation and can scarcely fail of being a useful employment of time; but the habit of reflecting upon what you have read is equally essential as than of reading itself, to give it all the efficacy of which it is susceptible.
241
The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
242
You need to play with supreme confidence, or else you’ll lose again, and then losing becomes a habit.
243
In my fairly disorganized life, yellow stickies are too easily lost, and as for software, I try to avoid using my computer as much more than a typewriter and a post office. I rely on my lifelong habit of daydreaming to spin my stories.
244
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.
245
During the year 1894, Pierre Curie wrote me letters that seem to me admirable in their form. No one of them was very long, for he had the habit of concise expression, but all were written in a spirit of sincerity and with an evident anxiety to make the one he desired as a companion know him as he was.
246
Man is largely a creature of habit, and many of his activities are more or less automatic reflexes from the stimuli of his environment.
247
Browsing our local farmer’s market is one of my family’s favorite weekend activities. Make it a relaxing, healthful habit for your family, and you’ll reap the nutritional rewards.
248
I feel like I’m a New Yorker because I really know the city. I actually tell the drivers where to go – I have this bad habit, I always question the drivers. I do that all the time because I feel like I know the best way, when really it’s like, ‘Yo, man, shut up. This dude does this every day of his life.’
249
Senator Hillary Clinton is attacking President Bush for breaking his campaign promise to cut carbon dioxide emissions, saying a promise made, a promise broken. And then out of habit, she demanded that Bush spend the night on the couch.
250
Kelly has a rather bad habit of interrupting.
251
You like more the people that you work with, you believe more in them, you share some fantastic moments and that habit of winning, winning, winning… after you win, you don’t want to stop winning.
252
It is unfair to blame man too fiercely for being pugnacious; he learned the habit from Nature.
253
I am not going to eat something that I have been told is not good for my system, and I do what I can to eat energy food, such as lean meats, whole grains, and lots of fruit and vegetables. Without this daily habit, my body would have given up a long time ago. There is no magic pill, no magic drink, no magic food.
254
New Yorkers have a delightfully narcissistic habit of assuming that if they’re not conscious of a scene, it doesn’t exist.
255
With all my heart, I plead with the Latter-day Saints to live honestly with the Lord in the payment of tithes and offerings. I plead with youth to establish this habit while you are still young and to resolve to continue with it all the days of your lives.
256
Discipline is based on pride, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of the goal or the fear of failure.
257
I don’t have the habit of wearing ornaments.
258
You’d be playing in a pub in the afternoon. Then late at night, you’d be playing a club. You got into that habit: ‘If we don’t play, we don’t eat.’
259
I think there has been this really bad habit of environmentalists being insufferably smug, where they are sort of saying, ‘This is the issue that beats all other issues,’ or, ‘Your issue doesn’t matter because nothing matters if the earth is fried.’
260
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
261
Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive.
262
I don’t have the habit of asking money from my parents.
263
I wanted to be a brain surgeon, but I had a bad habit of dropping things.
264
The law of harvest is to reap more than you sow. Sow an act, and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
265
One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.
266
In a sense it might even be said that our failure is to form habits: for, after all, habit is relative to a stereotyped world, and meantime it is only the roughness of the eye that makes two persons, things, situations, seem alike.
267
Women tend to break the network of friends they make, but it is a habit that men have learned. It is an approach to life that involves planning almost without thinking about it. And men sustain this. I came from a northern grammar school. I had a good education, but I didn’t have a good network.
268
As a band, we always took a really long time to make records, so unfortunately, we got into that habit of, like, ‘We’ll work on it tomorrow.’
269
My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent.
270
My unhealthiest habit is that I like eating white bread and butter. I don’t know why, I just ate it as a kid. It’s weird but I love it. My healthiest? I make a really good quinoa, chickpea and tahini lemon dressing salad, or I make a really bomb green smoothie.
271
I have a dirty little habit of distilling every city I’ve ever visited into the historical person I’d have most wanted to meet and share a cigarette with.
272
I got into a bad habit of dropping my elbow and pushing the ball to the plate instead of getting on top of it and using some leverage to get it down in the strike zone or get some depth with the ball.
273
Excusing or downplaying British racism with comparisons to the US is a bad habit with a long history.
274
The truth won’t set us free – until we develop the skills and the habit and the talent and the moral courage to use it.
275
The best restriction I learned was getting into the habit of doing something, even if I didn’t feel like it, instead of running away from it. Sometimes good work needs to be earned, and when you can overcome yourself, the muse notices and celebrates.
276
For a long time, I had a crazy girl dating habit.
277
Everything seems fine until you’re about 40. Then something is definitely beginning to go wrong. And you look in the mirror with your old habit of thinking, ‘While I accept that everyone grows old and dies, it’s a funny thing, but I’m an exception to that rule.’
278
You need to put what you learn into practice and do it over and over again until it’s a habit. I always say, ‘Seeing is not believing. Doing is believing.’ There is a lot to learn about fitness, nutrition and emotions, but once you do, you can master them instead of them mastering you.
279
Instead of a dedicated room, my best trigger is the actual habit of reading over the texts from the day before. Marking. Changing. Fussing. This ritual amounts to a habit of trust. Trust that I can make it better. That if I keep trying, I will come closer to something true.
280
Never permit failure to become a habit.
281
The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.
282
I am not in the habit of putting a ring on my own finger.
283
I come from a small town, so there we have this habit of talking to rickshawallahs while you are making a trip. So when I moved to Bombay, people found it strange that I do that.
284
I want to get rid of the image that I never turn up on time, because everyone always complains about this habit of mine.
285
I have no writing habit. I work when I feel like it, and I work when I have to – mostly the latter.
286
I find it is a bad habit to look at social media before bed, so I try to read something on paper – not on my phone – before I go to bed.
287
My worst habit is my untidiness. It bewilders my family, the degree to which I can create absolute chaos around me.
288
I’ve developed a karaoke habit. I’ve become a crooner.
289
My mother was an English teacher and she imbibed the habit of reading, and encouraged me to participate in debates and the like.
290
Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.
291
My working habit is to separate my aims as a painting from my aims as a poet. They come from very different places and ultimately lead me to very different places… I’ll leave what I mean by ‘places’ ambiguous.
292
I have always been extremely health conscious and I have never smoked and don’t encourage the habit of smoking.
293
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.
294
Here’s a habit I never thought I’d develop: I gravitate to anything online that’s marked ‘most popular’ or ‘most e-mailed.’ And I hate myself a little bit every time I do.
295
Acting for me is not a bad habit like smoking that I must make an effort to quit. I love acting; I love directing.
296
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
297
I try to always take off makeup. But I’m also human, and sometimes I get lazy. However, I do try to encourage people to make it a habit.
298
The Bible app is designed to make absorbing the Word as frictionless as possible. For example, to make the Bible app habit easier to adopt, a user who prefers to not read at all can simply tap a small icon, which plays a professionally produced audio track, read with all the dramatic bravado of Charlton Heston himself.
299
Chi Chi Rodriguez had as good a pair of hands as anybody I ever saw, and more shots than you can imagine. But Chi Chi had a habit of turning simple shots into difficult ones.
300
Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.
301
A lot of people mistake habit for hard work. Doing something over and over again is not working hard.
302
I’m a person who likes habit and knowing what my job is.
303
What it takes is to actually write: not to think about it, not to imagine it, not to talk about it, but to actually want to sit down and write. I’m lucky I learned that habit a really long time ago. I credit my mother with that. She was an English teacher, but she was a writer.
304
Fortunately, good posture – like poor posture – is habit forming.
305
The one thing you don’t want to do is get to a point where losing becomes a habit.
306
I come from a coffee-loving family, and you can always tell when my sister and I have been around, because both of us collect all the dead coffee from everyone’s morning cup, pour it over ice, and drink it. This is a disgusting habit.
307
Over the last four years, I’ve made a habit of coming into my office in the morning and just getting to work.
308
My habit would have been to veer towards the dark – to prove I was something; edgy, or maybe to prove that I was cognisant of the dark side. Now, with age and confidence, I can say, yeah, that’s true, but I am cognisant of the fact that people can do things well. And can be more loving than you expect.
309
Unfortunately here in the UK we have got into the habit of being nasty about people in the public eye. It’s all so vicious. In the States they are happy to just say people are great or that they look nice.
310
Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.
311
Each year one vicious habit discarded, in time might make the worst of us good.
312
We have seen from experience that, if we are in the habit of walking regularly on the same road, we are able to think about other things while walking, without paying attention to our steps.
313
Get the habit of analysis – analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.
314
I don’t make a habit of watching tennis matches, but I try to watch all the major finals. I try to make time for that. So unless I have something going with the kids where I can’t, I try to watch, and I enjoy that.
315
The habit of breaking up one’s colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism – Couture advocates it in a little book called ‘Causeries d’Atelier’ written about 1860 – it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason.
316
Treating an age group as a demographic requires coming up with something that’s common to every single one of them. Right?… So it’s reductionist in that it reduces an entire segment of civilization down to one person with one habit.
317
Get in the habit of vetting your research as you go – particularly research conducted online. Verify facts from multiple reputable sources before you record them.
318
If you want to cultivate a habit, do it without any reservation, till it is firmly established. Until it is so confirmed, until it becomes a part of your character, let there be no exception, no relaxation of effort.
319
Guys don’t get as many physical compliments as women do. Tell him his CrossFit habit is paying off. He’ll work double time to impress you.
320
Too many of us suffer from pervasive feelings of personal powerlessness. We have a terrible habit of obstructing our own paths forward, especially at the worst possible moments.
321
I grew up always having dessert after dinner. Always. It’s such a hard habit for me to break. It’s fine to have dessert every once in a while, but not seven days a week!
322
I’m reaching 87, trying to keep fit, presenting a vigorous figure, and it’s an effort, and is it worth the effort? I laugh at myself trying to keep a bold front. It’s become my habit. I just carry on.
323
Access to books and the encouragement of the habit of reading: these two things are the first and most necessary steps in education and librarians, teachers and parents all over the country know it. It is our children’s right and it is also our best hope and their best hope for the future.
324
The saddest thing about myself is that I never read a book. I never got the habit.
325
If I had had a thing like an iPad when I was a kid, then I never would have gotten into the habit of writing things down by hand.
326
Make it a habit to tell people thank you. To express your appreciation, sincerely and without the expectation of anything in return. Truly appreciate those around you, and you’ll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you’ll find that you have more of it.
327
When I wake up in the morning, I need the writing to go to. I begin there. And that’s not an accident, I mean, that habit of getting up in the morning and going to my writing first thing.
328
Our people are willing to work with the government on new technologies. Now, it’s a habit; every Estonian looks at it as part of our national identity. We understand that this allows us to provide better services to our people than our money would allow.
329
All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.
330
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.
331
Forming a good habit early in life is very important as it goes on to become your nature.
332
If you get into the habit of cutting corners, they start to add up.
333
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off until the day after tomorrow what should have been done the day before yesterday.
334
I have a habit of collecting all my old stuff. I still have all my old clothes and old cars, but my wife spends all my money.
335
I don’t have many superstitions, but I do have a few things I like to do out of routine and habit before a game.
336
Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities.
337
It’s a habit of mine now, noticing labels, logos, shoes.
338
Like, they know that I have a habit of rubbing my earlobes, I’ve been doing it since I was two.
339
The brank, or scold’s bridle, was unknown in America in its English shape: though from colonial records we learn that scolding women were far too plentiful, and were gagged for that annoying and irritating habit.
340
I’m very much a creature of habit.
341
The fact is that our kids aren’t reading books – or frankly, much of anything lately. Schools are under funded, some schools even closing their libraries. Parents have to realize that it’s their job, and not the school’s job, to get kids into the habit of reading for fun.
342
I read books, physical books. I am comfortable with it, I can carry it. It is my habit.
343
When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven’t developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don’t know how to eliminate them effectively.
344
No habit or quality is more easily acquired than hypocrisy, nor any thing sooner learned than to deny the sentiments of our hearts and the principle we act from: but the seeds of every passion are innate to us, and nobody comes into the world without them.
345
I cannot really recall when I faced stage fear because I started so young. It’s my natural habit. But you know, I can see how I have changed, rather improved as a singer. I never had a formal training but regular practice of singing.
346
It’s me, it’s my habit to perform live onstage every four, five years. In Italy, it’s my habit.
347
I was a mindless eater. I ate for comfort. I also ate out of boredom and habit.
348
Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.
349
A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led – with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!
350
Every time I would open my mouth to sing, everybody was paying attention to me. It became a habit.
351
I guess I have a weird habit of writing body part metaphors.
352
In the past 3-4 years I’ve developed a habit of keeping numerous small cassette recorders in my house and in a bag with me so that I’m able to commit to tape memory song ideas on a constant basis.
353
When you have a lot of opportunities, which I am blessed to have had in terms of my work, you get into the habit of not paying attention to certain specifics. And as we get busy, anything we do is the same thing.
354
The fact that natural-law theorists derive from the very nature of man a fixed structure of law independent of time and place, or of habit or authority or group norms, makes that law a mighty force for radical change.
355
I know it’s a terrible habit, but if I get a pimple, I’ll sit in front of the mirror and pick at it for hours.
356
I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer.
357
Get the habit of analysis – analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind.
358
Our brains have this habit of quilting dreams from the fabrics of our lives. As a filmmaker, I get to do it for a living.
359
Despite what many say or think, the PS2 is here to stay. I know that Microsoft dropped the Xbox like a bad habit but PS2 still has more staying power.
360
In all fields of creativity you see the result of work that has become habit. Where the creative impulse has become flaccid or has died out altogether, and yet because it is our work and our life we continue to do it.
361
I’m not very good at vacationing or relaxing or planning any of that for myself. So I’m in the habit of piggy-backing off of gigs and deciding to stay an extra day.
362
My travel habit is usually to visit somewhere I have never been rather than develop a consistent relationship with a place.
363
The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
364
I have a bad habit of reading more than one book simultaneously!
365
It is an old habit with theologians to beat the living with the bones of the dead.
366
I have always liked running, so it wasn’t particularly difficult to make it a habit. All you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere. It does not require anybody to do it with, and so I found the sport perfectly fits me as a person who tends to be independent and individualistic.
367
I’m not a creature of habit. I like to find things from unexpected sources.
368
The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.
369
I think my worst habit is struggling with technology, even though I know how this stuff works, I need to bring conscious thought into how I use.
370
The way for me to live is to have no way. My only habit should be to have none. Because I did it this way before is not sufficient reason to do it this way today.
371
There is freedom in forgiveness, and it’s not that hard to do once you get into the habit.
372
I got on the scale and I weighed around 203. I’m only 5’7. I was about to turn 30, and I wasn’t active anymore. So I started working with a nutritionist and a trainer. I played basketball twice a week. And soon it all just became a habit for me. I became addicted to something good for a change.
373
We are graced with a greater capacity for direct contact with our own higher power than most of us are in the habit of using.
374
When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.
375
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.
376
Just staying together is not a real virtue, if you’re not happy. Or you’re being denied. Or one person is being squashed. Or you really don’t love each other; you’re just there out of habit. That doesn’t work, no matter how many years you stay together.
377
Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.
378
When my dad died, I developed a nervous habit. He was very shy and quiet, and I was like him.
379
I’ve retired so many times now it’s getting to be a habit.
380
When I have some time, I enjoy watching movies, also trying to cultivate habit of reading.
381
‘The Creative Habit’ is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. ‘The Collaborative Habit’ is obviously about surviving with other people.
382
I have this horrible habit of just pressing online bookmarks that are at the top of my browser like ad infinitum.
383
As this is the first time I have had the floor, it may be well for me now to confess, that I am in the habit of freely imputing errors to my fellow-men.
