Habit Quotes - Page 29

• Insensibly he formed the most delightful habit in the world, the habit of reading: he did not know that thus he was providing himself with a refuge from all the distress of life; he did not know either that he was creating for himself an unreal world which would make the real world of every day a source of bitter disappointment.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Disappointment, Real, Reading

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.45, Diversion Books

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• From old habit, unconsciously he thanked God that he no longer believed in Him.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Old Habits, Human Bondage

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.160, Diversion Books

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• I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Travel, Italian, Venice

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• Oh, I have a habit of letting myself be lectured on the things I know best. I like to see if they are understood in the same way I understand; for there are many ways of knowing the same thing

  Alfred de Vigny

  Knowing, Way, Understood

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• Poetical feelings are a peril to scholarship. There are always poetical people ready to protest that a corrupt line is exquisite. Exquisite to whom? The Romans were foreigners writing for foreigners two millenniums ago; and for people whose gods we find quaint, whose savagery we abominate, whose private habits we don't like to talk about, but whose idea of what is exquisite is, we flatter ourselves, mysteriously identical to ours.

  Tom Stoppard

  Writing, Ideas, Two

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Invention of Love”, p.27, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The means of communication, the irresistible output of the entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed attitudes and habits, certain intellectual and emotional reactions which bind the consumers to the producers and, through the latter to the whole social system. The products indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness which is immune against its falsehood...Thus emerges a pattern of one-dimensional thought and behavior.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Attitude, Communication, Mean

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• When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.

  John Steinbeck

  Fire, Needs, Breakfast

  John Steinbeck (1994). “The Pearl”, p.24, Penguin

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• ...the habit of falling hardens the body, reaching the ground, to in itself, is a relief.

  Jose Saramago

  Fall, Relief, Body

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• It's funny how strangers can pass in front of you every day and all you see is a flat shadow, a vague outline, not noticing any of the details. They move in a gray crowd, always looking the same and acting the same, simple caricatures of who they really are, but once you get to know them, you notice the specific, tiniest things, you pay attention to the intricacies of their personalities, their habits and particular ways of walking and talking, the subtle changes in their appearance and dress.

  Gregory Galloway

  Moving, Simple, Talking

  Gregory Galloway (2015). “As Simple as Snow”, p.33, Penguin

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• Dearest Charles-- I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start... I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits. Love or what you will. S.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Love, Writing, Italian

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• It is an excellent habit to look at things as so many symbols.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Looks, Excellent, Symbols

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• 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

  Sorry, Greatness, Names

  Mark Twain's speech to the Savage Club (June 9, 1899), as quoted in "Mark Twain's Speeches" edited by William Dean Howells (pp. 277-278), 1910.

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• YOU FEAR TO DIE? "It's not that I don't want... I mean, I've always...it's just that life is a habit that's hard to break.

  Terry Pratchett

  Life, Mean, Want

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “Reaper Man: A Novel of Discworld”, p.16, Harper Collins

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• Madame Bellwings, Memoir Elf Coordinator, was not at all pleased with this request, because elves who write the memoirs of teenage girls have the habit of returning to the magical realm with atrocious grammar. They can't seem to shake the phrases "watever" and "no way," and they insert the word like into so many sentences that the other elves start slapping them...and for no apparent reason occasionally call out the name Edward Cullen.

  Janette Rallison

  Girl, Teenage, Writing

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• It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have a huge variety of needs and dangers.

  H. G. Wells

  Animal, Law, Perfect

  H. G. Wells “The Time Machine”, Games by CC

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• Miro, I'm so sorry. I always felt such pity for you humans because you could only think of one thing at a time and your memories were so imperfect and . . . now I realize that just getting through the day without killing somebody can be an achievement." It gets to be a habit. Most of us manage to keep our body count quite low. It's the neighborly way to live.

  Orson Scott Card

  Sorry, Memories, Thinking

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• The living room is a monument to my impulsive spending habits. I've got more than two hundred DVDs, including cinematic greats such as Monkey Bone, Corkey Romano, and A Night at the Roxbury, leading me to believe not only do I have awful taste in films, but I also have a Chris Kattan fixation. What I don't have is $4000 earing intrest in a money market account.

  Jen Lancaster

  Believe, Night, Dvds

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• You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that to torment and to instruct might sometimes be used as synonymous words.

  Jane Austen

  Mother, Morning, Children

  Jane Austen (2014). “Northanger Abbey (illustrated)”, p.90, Osmora Incorporated

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• It’s funny—when people call you “shy,” they usually smile. Like it’s cute, some funny little habit you’ll grow out of when you’re older, like the gaps in your grin when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt—really being shy, not just unsure at first—they wouldn’t smile. Not if they knew how the feeling knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It’s not cute at all.

  Claudia Gray

  Cute, Baby, Fall

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• Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.

  Jose Saramago

  Kings, Doe, Monk

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• At some point in my life I'd honestly hoped love would rescue me from the cold, drafty castle I lived in. But at another point, much earlier I think, I'd quietly begun to hope for nothing at all in the way of love, so as not to be disappointed. It works. It gets to be a habit.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Thinking, Castles, Way

  "Animal Dreams". Book by Barbara Kingsolver, 1990.

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• Each person is made of five different elements, she told me. Too much fire and you had a bad temper. That was like my father, whom my mother always critized for his cigarette habit and who always shouted back that she should feel guilty that he didn't let my mother speak her mind. Too little wood and you bent too quickly to listen to other people's ideas, unable to stand on your own. This was like my Auntie An-mei. Too much water and you flowed in too many different directions. like myself.

  Amy Tan

  Mother, Father, Ideas

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• For a long time the fear of seeming singular scared me away; but by degrees, as people became accustomed to me and my habits, and to such shadows of peculiarity as were engrained in my nature - shades, certainly not striking enough to interest, and perhaps not prominent enough to offend, but born in and with me, and no more to be parted with than my identity - but slow degrees I became a frequenter of this straight narrow path.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Long, People, Shadow

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• I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.

  E. L. Konigsburg

  Love, Hurt, Light

  E. L. Konigsburg (1999). “The View from Saturday”, p.70, Simon and Schuster

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• Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall’ - Lynette McGregor

  Malorie Blackman

  Fall, Noughts And Crosses, Floating

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