Habitual Quotes - Page 8

• It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Lying, Mean, Vices

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.81, Courier Corporation

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• A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.

  Nikola Tesla

  Criminals, Normal, Century

  "Machine to End War by Nikola Tesla as told to George Sylvester Viereck". "Liberty", www.pbs.org. February 1937.

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• The brain does not manufacture thoughts unless we stimulate it with habitual verbalizing. When we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain can experience things as they are.

  Henepola Gunaratana

  Practice, Brain, Doe

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• The only way to ease our pain is to experience it fully. Learn to stay with uneasiness, learn to stay with the tightening, so that the habitual chain reaction doesn't continue to rule your life.

  Pema Chodron

  Pain, Ease, Way

  Pema Chodron (2009). “Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears”, p.28, Shambhala Publications

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• Human contacts have been so highly valued in the past only because reading was not a common accomplishment.... The world, you must remember, is only just becoming literate. As reading becomes more and more habitual and widespread, an ever-increasing number of people will discover that books will give them all the pleasures of social life and none of its intolerable tedium.

  Aldous Huxley

  Book, Reading, Past

  Aldous Huxley (2013). “Crome Yellow”, p.163, Courier Corporation

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• There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.

  William James

  Drinking, Bed, Rising

  William James (2012). “The Principles of Psychology”, p.122, Courier Corporation

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• In every age of well-marked transition, there is the pattern of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing and there is oncoming a new complex of habit.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Change, Practice, Dumb

  Alfred North Whitehead (1967). “Adventures of Ideas”, p.7, Simon and Schuster

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• I do not know what the cat can have eaten. Usually I know exactly what the cat has eaten. Not only have I fed it to the cat, at the cat's insistence, but the cat has thrown it up on the rug, and someone has tracked it all over onto the other rug. I do not know why cats are such habitual vomiters. They do not seem to enjoy it, judging by the sounds they make while they are doing it. It's their nature. A dog is going to bark. A cat is going to vomit.

  Roy Blount, Jr.

  Dog, Nature, Cat

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• Basically, morphic fields are fields of habit, and they've been set up through habits of thought, through habits of activity, and through habits of speech. Most of our culture is habitual.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Culture, Speech, Fields

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• Not every good idea survives. Not every new form of art is repeated. Not every new potential instinct is successful. Only the successful ones get repeated. By natural selection and then through repetition they become probable, more habitual.

  Rupert Sheldrake

  Art, Successful, Ideas

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• Artists speak to a different part of us, bypassing the cloudy filter of reason and the fears and prejudices of the habitual mind.

  Wes Nisker

  Artist, Mind, Different

  Wes Nisker (2012). “The Essential Crazy Wisdom”, p.111, Ten Speed Press

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• Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night.

  William James

  Morning, Lying, Night

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.48, Harvard University Press

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• Never assume that habitual silence means ability in reserve.

  Geoffrey Madan

  Mean, Silence, Luck

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• Never suppose that in any possible situation or under any circumstances that it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing however slightly so it may appear to you... Encourage all your virtuous dispositions, and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises, being assured that they will gain strength by exercise ... and that exercise will make them habitual.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Truth, Lying, Exercise

  Thomas Jefferson, Jerry Holmes (2002). “Thomas Jefferson: A Chronology of His Thoughts”, p.60, Rowman & Littlefield

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• We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.

  Christopher McCandless

  Unconventional, Lifestyle, Turns

  Letter to Russell Fritz (as known as Ron Franz), April 1992.

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• When you refrain from habitual thoughts and behavior, the uncomfortable feelings will still be there. They don’t magically disappear. Over the years, I’ve come to call resting with the discomfort “the detox period,” because when you don’t act on your habitual patterns, it’s like giving up an addiction. You’re left with the feelings you were trying to escape. The practice is to make a wholehearted relationship with that

  Pema Chodron

  Wisdom, Buddhist, Giving Up

  Pema Chodron (2012). “Living Beautifully: with Uncertainty and Change”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

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• Each time you stay present with fear and uncertainty, you're letting go of a habitual way of finding security and comfort.

  Pema Chodron

  Letting Go, Comfort, Way

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• Thus far we have considered the problem of conservation of land purely as an economic issue. A false front of exclusively economic determinism is so habitual to Americans in discussing public questions that one must speak in the language of compound interest to get a hearing.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Rivers, Issues

  Aldo Leopold (2013). “Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other Writings on Conservation and Ecology: (Library of America #238)”, p.315, Library of America

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• We take for granted that we need to take showers, clean our house, and wash our clothes. Yet the mind and its thoughts need cleansing and ordering as much as our bodies. While few of us would consider eating dinner on yesterday's dirty dishes, we think nothing of tackling our problems with yesterdays cluttered minds.... The purpose to any meditation technique is to move beyond the normal contents of our consciousness, empty your mind of its habitual chatter, and concentrate your attention for the purpose of experiencing a higher state

  Anodea Judith

  Dirty, Moving, Thinking

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• I have quitted all forms of devotion and set prayers but those to which my state obliges me. And I make it my business only to persevere in His holy presence, wherein I keep myself by a simple attention, and a general fond regard to GOD, which I may call an actual presence of GOD, or, to speak better, an habitual, silent, and secret conversation of the soul with GOD, which often causes me joys and raptures inwardly, and sometimes also outwardly, so great that I am forced to use means to moderate them, and prevent their appearance to others.

  Brother Lawrence

  Prayer, Mean, Simple

  Brother Lawrence (2012). “The Practice of the Presence of God and The Spiritual Maxims”, p.20, Courier Corporation

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• This same habitual blindness to spiritual, substantive dimensions of every significant challenge continues to handicap Hollywood.

  Michael Medved

  Spiritual, Challenges, Hollywood

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• There is on the globe one single spot, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans, through which the produce of three-eighths of our territory must pass to market, and from its fertility it will ere long yield more than half of our whole produce and contain more than half our inhabitants.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Yield, New Orleans, History

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of T. Jefferson”, p.492

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• Even happiness itself may become habitual. There is a habit of looking at the bright side of things, and also of looking at the dark side.

  Samuel Smiles

  Gratitude, Dark, Sides

  Samuel Smiles (1859). “Self-help; with illustrations of character and conduct”, p.322

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• A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Humor, Punishment

  Oscar Wilde (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Oscar Wilde (Illustrated)”, p.1649, Delphi Classics

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• Self-love is, in almost all men, such an over-weight that they are incredulous of a man's habitual preference of the general good to his own; but when they see it proved by sacrifices of ease, wealth, rank, and of life itself, there is no limit to their admiration.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sacrifice, Love Is, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2499, Delphi Classics

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