Quotes About Habit

When my alarm goes off between 6 to 6:30 A.M, the first thing I do is reach for my phone. I look at Twitter to see the headlines. It's become my news aggregator. Then I check my Instagram.

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.

I do an annual detox for two weeks, eliminating sugar, processed foods, and simple carbs from my diet. I usually lose 7-10 pounds and look at it as my yearly renewal.

I did that for 40 years or more. I never had any writer's block. I got up in the morning, sat down at the typewriter - now, computer - lit up a cigarette.

I've never had coffee. I've always hated the smell. It was always tea. I was a pretty typical kid, though. I grew up drinking Lipton. I didn't know there was other tea to drink.

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.

I drink a lot. More or less 10 or 12 coffees a day, both typical Italian and espresso.

A typical day in my writing life starts with looking at pictures of real estate online for at least 20 minutes. If I happen to be actually in the market for a house, I do this for 40 minutes. Then I walk my dog, come back home, and tell myself I can look at real estate for another five minutes.

I don't like typing messages on my phone. Some people get used to it.

I used to type, but now, typing or working with a computer, I get a stiff neck. So I prefer writing longhand.

Things that people are doing constantly but aren't thinking about. That's the ultimate 'Portlandia' concept.

[In] my era everybody smoked and everybody drank and there was no drug use

Power is sweet; it is a drug, the desire for which increases with a habit.

Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words, they become actions. Watch your actions, they become habit.

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.

Habit rules the unreflecting herd.

If you get into the mental habit of relating what you're reading to the basic structure of the underlying ideas being demonstrated, you gradually accumulate some wisdom.

The mind unlearns with difficulty what it has long learned.

Changing our decision sets up a bad habit. It reinforces decision-making as an expression of bewilderment and ignorance, instead of wisdom and freedom.

The supposition that the future resembles the past, is not founded on arguments of any kind, but is derived entirely from habit.

Its matter was not new to me, but was presented in a new aspect. It shook me in my habit - the habit of nine-tenths of the world - of believing that all was right about me, because I was used to it.

Nothing is more dangerous than discontinued labor; it is habit lost. A habit easy to abandon, difficult to resume.

Sadness isn't a kilesha , a habit pattern evoked by challenge. Sadness is what the mind feels when it is bereaved or bereft. All the wisdom in the world about the inevitability of change or the lawfulness of karma does not ease the heaviness in the mind that we feel when we lose someone, or something, we hold dear [p. 148].

The inspector had interviewed boys before, boys from the poorest parts of town. He had the habit of not specifying "mam" or "dad" or even "parents." They were things he knew not every child possessed and so he was careful.