Quotes About Habit

I knew well therefore what would be my father's feelings, but I could not tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which had taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were, to procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the great object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be completed.

I found that I was reaching, automatically, for another cigarette; my eyes and throat felt hot and aching, and my brain stupid. I let it slip back into the packet. I had smoked too much that evening already.

being yourself"; however, the more you smile, the more natural it will feel and eventually if you do it enough, it will become a habit (which takes

Most species do not change their habits during their few million years on earth or alter their lifestyle much in different parts of their range.

Every behavior is the product of an instinct trained by experience.

I have to speak carefully now because I have this strange habit of imitating British people without even realizing that I'm doing it.

I'm not an alcoholic—I don't have the discipline to become one—

I'm not an alcoholic—I don't have the discipline to become one—but

We are very much like birds that have lived too long in a cage to which we return even when we get the chance to fly away. We have grown so accustomed to our faults that we can barely imagine what life would be like without them. The prospect of change makes us dizzy.

Even if you knew your routine like the back of your hand, a checklist was still important.

Every single day for the past three weeks, she

She drove fast, as a matter of habit, an even speed without a sense of haste.

Times change, and people change with the times—the wise ones do. Wisdom lies in knowing when to remember and when to forget. Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to expect of the human race.

Consistency is not a habit of mind which it is wise to practice or to expect of the human race.

It is amazing how everything can fall into a routine

and suffering is another bad habit," as Bellow had said in Herzog.

THE "GOING HOME" SYNDROME As human beings, we gravitate toward the familiar. We like to sleep on the same side of the bed each night, to park in the same space at work, to go back to our favorite vacation spot. Returning to the familiar is a basic instinct that gives our lives a sense of continuity and safety in a chaotic and changing universe.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." — Attributed to Aristotle

Life is of course a misnomer, since viruses, lacking the ability to eat or respire, are officially dead, which is in itself intriguing, showing as it does that the habit of predation can be taken up by clusters of molecules that are in no way alive.

At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

Her body moved with the frankness that comes from solitary habits. But solitude is only a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot; every choice is a world made new for the chosen. All secrets are witnessed.

I know how people are with their habits of mind... as a husband quits a wife, leaving her with her naked body curled around the emptied-out mine of her womb. I know people. Most have no earthly notion of the price of a snow-white conscience.

It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.

Hope it an unbearably precious thing, worth its weight in feathers. If that's too much to think about, best to tuck it in a pocket anyway, and make it a habit.