Quotes about habits

The sight of slabs of flesh should horrify and disgust any sensitive person if they exercised their inborn compassion. Habit has dimmed their native kindliness. Their palates have become abnormally corrupted and conditioned by a taste for dead food, its flavoring and odors. People who eat slaughtered creatures every day find it hard to imagine what to substitute for meat, not realizing that meat is the substitute for vegetables.

Montaigne is wrong. Custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for this sole reason, that they think it just. Otherwise they would follow it no longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or justice.

The most important affair in life is the choice of a calling; chance decides it. Custom makes men masons, soldiers, slaters. ...We choose our callings according as we hear this or that praised or despised in our childhood, for we naturally love truth and hate folly. ...It is custom then which... constrains nature. But sometimes nature gains the ascendancy, and preserves man's instinct, in spite of all custom, good or bad.

Custom is our nature. He who is accustomed to the faith believes in it, can no longer fear hell, and believes in nothing else. He who is accustomed to believe that the king is terrible … etc. Who doubts then that our soul, being accustomed to see number, space, motion, believes that and nothing else?

Parents fear lest the natural love of their children may fade away. What kind of nature is that which is subject to decay? Custom is a second nature which destroys the former. But what is nature? For is custom not natural? I am much afraid that nature is itself only a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

Old responses live long, die hard, and frequently leave a troublesome corpse.

A person can get used to just about anything if it happens slow enough.

When choosing people to work and associate with, do not be mesmerized by their reputation or taken in by the surface image they try to project. Instead, train yourself to look deep within them and see their character. People’s character is formed in their earliest years and by their daily habits. It is what compels them to repeat certain actions in their lives and fall into negative patterns. Look closely at such patterns and remember that people never do something just once. They will inevitably repeat their behavior. Gauge the relative strength of their character by how well they handle adversity, their ability to adapt and work with other people, their patience and ability to learn. Always gravitate toward those who display signs of strength, and avoid the many toxic types out there. Know thoroughly your own character so you can break your compulsive patterns and take control of your destiny.

The most insidious thing about bondage was how easy it was to grow accustomed to it.

For years your treasure has been in the Stock Exchange, or the House of Commons, or the Salon, or the reviews that "really count" (if they still exist), or the drawing-rooms of Mayfair; and thither your heart perpetually tends to stray. Habit has you in its chains. You are not free.

Because of that corporate life, transfusing you, giving to you and taking from you - conditioning you as it does in countless oblique and unapparent ways - you are still compelled to react in to many suggestions which you are no longer able to respect: controlled, to the last moment of your bodily existence and perhaps afterwords, by habit, custom, the good old average way of misunderstanding the world.

There was a sense of security in old, familiar feelings in spite of their discomfort.