Quotes About Behavior

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you, If you do not act upon them?

Books about business deal with functions and strategies—the mechanics of running a successful company," he said. "Fiction teaches you about human beings—how they think, how they behave, what's important to them. I'm more interested in people than I am in how businesses work.

Manners are of more importance than laws. The law can touch us here and there, now and then. Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation like that of the air we breathe in.

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

I have seen you grow brutal under a vocabulary of love. If you wanted to thieve, your code would expand to embrace the act of thieving. Feeling no need to drink, you will promptly despise a drunkard.

For, when Stubb dressed, instead of first putting his legs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.

there is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not

habit—strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

If he had not been a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled himself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage, he never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on.

Yet habit - strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish?

experience nine times out of ten is merely stupidity hardened into habit.—Well

Aristotle observed that people become virtuous by acting virtuous: if you do good, you'll be good.

Aristotle observed that people become virtuous by acting virtuous: if you do good, you'll be good.3

At New Year's he had given Anne a present of silver forks with handles of rock crystal. He hopes she will use them to eat with, not to stick in people.

Have you ever gotten so sad that it actually feels GOOD to do something you know will make you even sadder?

Do thou restrain the haughty spirit in thy breast, for better far is gentle courtesy.

O great shamelessness, we followed

it's impossible to undo fifteen or twenty years of learned behavior with a mother in only a few months. If it takes nine months to bring a life into this world, what makes us think we can let go of someone in less?

the scientific view that all behavior is ultimately based on self-interest isn't new at all—it began its climb early in the twentieth century.

There are numerous hints that trade, like the spiny lobsters' seasonal parades, may have been stamped by the Baldwin Effect into human DNA. Animal behaviorist Frans de Waal feels that humans offer each other presents (and expect returns) much more often than other primates do. This tendency shows up just a few years after birth, when children are often driven by instinct more powerfully than by what they've learned.

However, if Sir Launcelot of the Lake failed now and then in his behavior, who is there in the world shall say, 'I never fell into error'? And if he more than once offended, who is there shall have hardihood to say, 'I never committed offence'?

If a man is convinced that he is safe only as long as he uses his power to give others a sense of insecurity, then the measure of their security is in his hands. If security or insecurity is at the mercy of a single individual or group, then control of behavior becomes routine. All imperialism functions in this way.

Human beings, whatever their backgrounds, are more open than we think, that their behavior cannot be confidently predicted from their past, that we are all creatures vulnerable to new thoughts, new attitudes. And while such vulnerability creates all sorts of possibilities, both good and bad, its very existence is exciting. It means that no human being should be written off, no change in thinking deemed impossible.