Practice in time becomes second nature.
—Indian Proverb
To change a habit, make a conscious decision, then act out the new behavior.
—Maxwell Maltz (1899–1975) American Surgeon, Motivational Writer
Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams (1838–1918) American Historian, Man of Letters
How use doth breed a habit in a man! this shadowy desert, unfrequented woods, I better brook than flourishing peopled towns.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
Successful people are simply those with success habits.
—Brian Tracy (b.1944) American Author, Motivational Speaker
You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically—to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside. The enemy of the “best” is often the “good”.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
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.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–99) German Philosopher, Physicist
Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British Novelist, Short-Story Writer, Playwright
Habit is the second nature which destroys the first.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.
—Ralph Washington Sockman (1889–1970) American United Methodist Pastor
The phrases that men hear or repeat continually, end by becoming convictions and ossify the organs of intelligence.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits, or they’ll eventually conquer you.
—Rob Gilbert (b.1966) American Animator, Cartoonist
Habit with its iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869) French Poet, Politician, Historian
Man is occasionally what he should be perpetually.
—Unknown
The beginning of pride and hatred lies in worldly desire, and the strength of your desire if from habit. When an evil tendency becomes confirmed by habit, rage is triggered when anyone restrains you.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207–73) Persian Muslim Mystic
Look at the word responsibility—“response-ability”—the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
Success is a matter of understanding and religiously practicing specific, simple habits that always lead to success.
—Robert Ringer (b.1979) American Entrepreneur, Motivational Speaker, Author
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle (384BCE–322BCE) Ancient Greek Philosopher, Scholar
The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds us irrevocably thought and act.
—Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924) American New Thought Writer, Physician, Entrepreneur
Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may, in the end, prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (1791–1865) American Poetaster, Author
Your mind will be like its habitual thoughts; for the soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts. Soak it then in such trains of thoughts as, for example: Where life is possible at all, a right life is possible.
—Marcus Aurelius (121–180) Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher
Habits are formed by the repetition of particular acts. They are strengthened by an increase in the number of repeated acts. Habits are also weakened or broken, and contrary habits are formed by the repetition of contrary acts.
—Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American Philosopher, Educator
I trust everything, under God, to habit, upon which, in all ages, the law giver as well as the schoolmaster has mainly placed his reliance; habit which makes everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful and hard; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to the nature of the child, grown to be an adult, as the most atrocious crimes are to any of your lordships. Give a child the habit of sacredly regarding the truth, of carefully respecting the properly 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 an element in which he cannot breathe, as of lying, or cheating, or stealing.
—Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) Scottish Jurist, Politician
Habituation puts to sleep the eye of our judgment.
—Michel de Montaigne (1533–92) French Essayist
Sow a thought, reap an act; Sow an act, reap a habit; Sow a habit, reap a character; Sow a character, reap adestiny.
—Anonymous
A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.
—Hosea Ballou (1771–1852) American Theologian
A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.
—Desiderius Erasmus (c.1469–1536) Dutch Humanist, Scholar
Trust is the highest form of human motivation.
—Stephen Covey (1932–2012) American Self-help Author
Bad habits are as infectious by example as the plague itself is by contact.
—Henry Fielding (1707–54) English Novelist, Dramatist