Gilbert Ryle - Billie Holiday - Thomas Paine - Ovid - Virginia Woolf - Erasmus - Francois Rabelais - Oscar Wilde - Mark Twain - Eubie Blake - William Wordsworth - Aristotle - Mick Jagger - W Somerset Maugham - Marlene Dietrich - Albert Camus - Samuel Johnson - John Dryden - Samuel Beckett - Marcel Proust - Cicero - Bahya ibn Paquda - Igor Stravinsky - George Eliot - Ron Atkinson - Alex Jones - Jim Rohn -
Philosophy is the replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind, 1949
In this country, don’t forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There’s no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love. Billie Holiday, Lady Sings the Blues, 1956
A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right. Thomas Paine
Nothing is more powerful than custom or habit. Ovid
Habits and customs are a convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow their souls free play. Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader
A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit. Erasmus
A habit does not a monk make. Francois Rabelais
Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs one step at a time. Oscar Wilde
I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors because they have a sad habit of dying off. Chaucer is dead. Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I’m not feeling so well myself. Mark Twain
I don’t have any bad habits. They might be bad habits for other people, but they’re all right for me. Eubie Blake
Not choice
But habit rules the unreflecting herd. William Wordsworth
Good habits formed at youth make all the difference. Aristotle
Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. Aristotle
I got nasty habits; I take tea at three. Mick Jagger
An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones. W Somerset Maugham
Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities. Bertrand Russell
Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs. Marlene Dietrich
The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits. Albert Camus, The Plague
The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. Samuel Johnson
We first make our habits, then our habits make us. John Dryden, also attributed Charles Noble
Habit is a compromise effected between the individual and his environment, or between the individual and his own organic eccentricities, the guarantee of a dull inviolability, the lightning-conductor of his existence. Samuel Beckett, Proust
Habit is a great deadener. Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1955
The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains. Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
Most of our faculties lie dormant because they can rely upon Habit, which knows what there is to be done and has no need of their services. Marcel Proust, Remembrance of Things Past I: Swann’s Way & Within a Budding Grove
Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do. Shaquille O’Neal
Great is the power of habit. It teaches us to bear fatigue and to despise wounds and pain. Cicero
You should know, O man, that the greatest enemy you have in the world is your inclination. Bahya ibn Paquda, Jewish philosopher
Tradition is entirely different from habit, even from an excellent habit, since habit is by definition an unconscious acquisition and tends to become mechanical, whereas tradition results from a conscious and deliberate acceptance ... Tradition presupposes the reality of what endures. Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, 1947
One gets a bad habit of being unhappy. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss
I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat. Ron Atkinson, 1979
Human beings form habits … Are we acting out the artificial roles created by others who have successfully harnessed our minds through our habits? Alex Jones: State of Mind
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going. Jim Rohn