Quotes about habits

One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.

The stream of memory is only interrupted by great illnesses, and the stream of conduct, by great passions. Our tastes and inclinations may change, but this change, though it may be sudden enough, is rendered less abrupt by our habits. The skilful artist, in a good colour scheme, contrives so to mingle and blend his tints that the transitions are imperceptible; and certain colour washes are spread over the whole picture so that there may be no sudden breaks. So should it be with our likings. Unbalanced characters are always changing their affections, their tastes, their sentiments; the only constant factor is the habit of change; but the man of settled character always returns to his former habits and preserves to old age the tastes and the pleasures of his childhood.

Habit accustoms us to everything. What we see too much, we no longer imagine; and it is only imagination which makes us feel the ills of others. It is thus by dint of seeing death and suffering that priests and doctors become pitiless.

The rule of habit is only good for feeble hearts, and it makes them more and more feeble day by day. The only useful habit for children is to be accustomed to submit without difficulty to necessity, and the only useful habit for man is to submit without difficulty to the rule of reason. Every other habit is a vice.

... habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

Just as, out of habit, one consults a run-down clock as though it were still going, so too one may look at the face of a beautiful woman as though she were still in love.

The ideas of inheritance and succession are so very familiar that the generality of mankind consider them as founded not only in reason but in nature itself.