Habits
are automatic routines of behavior that are repeated regularly, without thinking. They are
learned
, not
instinctive
, human
behaviors
that occur automatically, without the explicit contemporaneous
intention
of the person. The person may not be paying
attention
to or be
conscious
or
aware
of the behavior. When the behavior is brought to the person's attention, they may be able to control it.
- Not for nothing is habit called a second and a kind of manufactured nature.
- Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.
- Samuel Beckett
(1906?1989), Irish dramatist and novelist.
Proust
, Grove Press edition (1957), p. 7.
- HABIT, n. A shackle for the free.
- Ambrose Bierce
,
The Cynic's Dictionary
(1906); republished as
The Devil's Dictionary
(1911).
- Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-
pleasures
, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, un
worthy
, and un
profitable
; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is
painful
, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the
Middle Path
; it gives
vision
, gives
knowledge
, and leads to
calm
, to insight, to
enlightenment
and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata...? It is the
Noble Eightfold path
, and nothing else, namely: right
understanding
, right
thought
, right
speech
, right
action
, right
livelihood
, right
effort
, right
mindfulness
and right
concentration
.
- Whereas some ascetics and Brahmins remain addicted to such unedifying conversation as about kings, robbers, ministers, armies, dangers, wars, food, drink, clothes, beds, garlands, perfumes, relatives, carriages, villages, towns and cities, countries, women, heroes, street- and well-gossip, talk of the departed, desultory chat, speculations about land and sea, talk about being and non-being, the ascetic Gotama refrains from such conversation.
- Gautama Buddha
M. Walshe, trans. (1987), Sutta 1 (Brahmajala Sutta (Theravada)), verse 1.17, p. 70.
- Each year one vicious habit rooted out, In time might make the worst Man good throughout.
- You get used to everything. No human force, not even
fear
, is stronger than habit.
- Addictions come from shortages in
infancy
. People try to compensate this way.
Alcoholism
is generally produced from a shortage in
mother
's milk. And
heroin
addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of
recognition
; the
drug
fills the emptiness of not being
loved
.
- Every habit makes our hand more witty and our wit less handy.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
(1844?1900), German philosopher and critic.
The Gay Science
(1882), Third Book, 'Habit', aphorism 247.
- Unwinding a habit that you have allowed to entangle you can be difficult. But the power is in you. Do not despair.
- How use doth breed a habit in a man!
This shadowy desert, unfrequented woods,
I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.
- To uproot an old habit is sometimes a more painful thing, and vastly more difficult, than to wrench out a tooth.
- Samuel Smiles
, 19th C Scottish author and reformer. 'Character: The True Gentleman',
Self-Help
(1856), Ch 13.
- Habits are largely absent from modern social and personality psychology. This is due to outdated perspectives that placed habits in conflict with goals. In modern theorizing, habits are represented in memory as implicit context?response associations, and they guide responding in conjunction with goals. Habits thus have important implications for our field. Emerging research shows that habits are an important mechanism by which people self-regulate and achieve long-term goals. Also, habits change through specific interventions, such as changes in context cues.
- Being lifted out of your normal routine completely changes your perception of everything. I often think that this time twist is like taking a drug, it alters your consciousness.
- Andrea Zittel
Art Is the Highest Form of Hope & Other Quotes by Artists
by Phaidon (2016) p 249
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
[
edit
]
- Quotes reported in
Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations
(1922), p. 436-47.
- A civil habit
Oft covers a good man.
- Consuetude quasi altera natura effici.
- Habit is, as it were, a second nature.
- Cicero
,
De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum
, V, 25,
Tusculanarum Disputationum
, II, 17.
- Habit with him was all the test of truth;
"It must be right: I've done it from my youth."
- We sow our thoughts, and we reap our actions; we sow our actions, and we reap our habits; we sow our habits, and we reap our characters; we sow our characters, and we reap our destiny.
- Clavus clavo pellitur, consuetudo consuetudine vincitur.
- A nail is driven out by another nail, habit is overcome by habit.
- Erasmus
,
Diluculum
.
- A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.
- Habits form character and character is destiny.
- Joseph Kaines
, address (Oct. 21, 1883);
Our Daily Faults and Failings
.
- Consuetudo consuetudine vincitur.
- Small habits, well pursued betimes,
May reach the dignity of crimes.
- Sow an action, reap a habit.
- Nil consuetudine majus.
- Nothing is stronger than habit.
- Ovid
,
Ars Amatoria
, II, 345.
- Abeunt studia in mores.
- Pursuits become habits.
- Ovid
,
Heroides
, XV, 83.
- Morem fecerat usus.
- Habit had made the custom.
- Ovid
,
Metamorphoses
, II. 345.
- Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
- Ovid
,
Metamorphoses
, Book XV, line 155. Dryden's translation.
- Frangas enim citius quam corrigas quæ in pravum induerunt.
- Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.
- Quintilian
,
De Institutione Oratoria
, I, 3, 3.
- Sow an act and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny.
- Consuetudo natura potentior est.
- Vulpem pilum mutare, non mores.
- The fox changes his skin but not his habits.
- Suetonius
,
Vespasianus
, 16.
- Inepta hæc esse, nos quæ facimus sentio;
Verum quid facias? ut homo est, ita morem geras.
- I perceive that the things that we do are silly; but what can one do? According to men's habits and dispositions, so one must yield to them.
- Terence
,
Adelphi
, III, 3, 76.
- Quam multa injusta ac prava fiunt moribus!
- How many unjust and wicked things are done from mere habit.
- Terence
,
Heauton timoroumenos
, IV, 7, 11.
- In ways and thoughts of weakness and of wrong,
Threads turn to cords, and cords to cables strong.
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
(1895)
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edit
]
Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert,
Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
(1895).
- Habit if not resisted soon becomes necessity.
- Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth?of carefully respecting the property of others ? of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which can involve him in distress, and he will just as likely think of rushing into the element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying or cheating or stealing.
- Centres, or centre-pieces of wood, are put by builders under an arch of stone while it is in the process of construction till the key-stone is put in. Just such is the use Satan makes of pleasures to construct evil habits upon; the pleasure lasts till the habit is fully formed; but that done, the habit may stand eternal. The pleasures are sent for firewood, and the hell begins in this life.
- Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist, but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement; we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended to a higher atmosphere.
- The diminutive chains of habit are seldom heavy enough to be felt, till they are too strong to be broken.
- A large part of Christian virtue consists in right habits.
- Every sinful act is another cord woven into that mighty cable of habit, which binds the spirit to the throne of darkness.