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Habit Quotes

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Habit Quotes

“Character is the sum of one's good habits (virtues) and bad habits (vices). These habits mark us and affect the ways in which we respond to life's events and challenges. Our character is our profile of habits and dispositions to act in certain ways.”

Way Character Certain Challenges Virtue Events Habit Mark Vices Disposition Profile Bad Habits Good Habits

Author:Thomas Lickona

“Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit -- or a mask. . . . The foregoing maxim shows the difference between truth and sarcasm.”

Men Shows Differences Virtue Habit Vices Mask Sarcasm Maxims

Book:The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt

Source: The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt

“Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.”

Men Virtue Habit Vices Mask

Book:The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt

Source: The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt

“If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.”

Ifs Pleasure Common Opinion Crime Ignorance Habit Democratic Vices Scales Fewer Display Brilliance Outrageous Wellbeing Vigorous Aristocracy Democratic Society Wretchedness

Author:Alexis de Tocqueville

“If thou dost still retain the same ill habits, the same follies, too, still thou art bound to vice, and still a slave.”

Ifs Art Stills Habit Slave Bounds Ill Vices Folly

Author:John Dryden

“There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.”

Firsts Two Virtue Habit Vices Connected Contentment Exertion Indolence

Book:Works

Source: Works

“Man is neither by birth nor disposition a savage, nor of unsocial habits, but only becomes so by indulging in vices contrary to his nature.”

Men Birth Habit Vices Contrary Savages Disposition

Author:Plutarch

“There will he nothing more that posterity can add to our immoral habits; our descendants must have the same desires and act the same follies as their sires. Every vice has reached its zenith.”

Desire Habit Add Vices Folly Immoral Posterity Descendants Zenith

Author:Juvenal

“Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open foes. The debt habit is the twin brother of poverty.”

Secret Poverty Brother Habit Vices Debt Twins Foe Idleness Thrift Twin Brother

Author:Theodore T. Munger

“I find it awfully difficult to determine if the habit of talking about oneself at length runs contrary to the basic rules of propriety, or if instead the man exempt from this vice is rare.”

Ifs Men Running Difficult Talking He Man Habit Oneself Determine Vices Contrary Length Propriety

Author:Giacomo Leopardi

“This fine young man had all the inclination to be a profligate of the first water, and only lacked the one good trait in the common catalogue of debauched vices - open-handedness - to be a notable vagabond. But there his griping and penurious habits stepped in; and as one poison will sometimes neutralise another, when wholesome remedies would not avail, so he was restrained by a bad passion from quaffing his full measure of evil, when virtue might have sought to hold him back in vain.”

Source: Children's Tales from Dickens – The Great Classics & The Wonderful Stories for Children (Illustrated Edition): Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Holiday Romance, The Old Curiosity Shop, Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, Christmas Stories, A Child’s Dream of a Star…

“In sum, all actions and habits are to be esteemed good or evil by their causes and usefulness in reference to the commonwealth, and not by their mediocrity, nor by their being commended. For several men praise several customs, and, contrarily, what one calls vice, another calls virtue, as their present affections lead them.”

Men Action Evil Causes Virtue Habit Ethics Praise Affection Vices Good And Evil Customs Mediocrity Usefulness Commonwealth

Book:Behemoth or The Long Parliament

Source: Behemoth or The Long Parliament

“The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.”

Ends Moral Teach Virtue Duty Habit Morality Embrace Vices Representation Speculation Begets Deformity

Book:Moral Philosophy

Source: Moral Philosophy

“For the honest people, relations increase with the years. For the vicious, inconveniences increase. Inconstancy is the defect of vice; the influence of habit is one of the qualities of virtue.”

People Years Quality Virtue Influence Honest Habit Increase Relation Vices Defects Vicious Inconvenience Honest People Inconstancy

Author:Suzanne Curchod

“In vain are Schools, Academies, and Universities instituted, if loose Principles and licentious habits are impressed upon Children in their earliest years . . . . The Vices and Examples of the Parents cannot be concealed from the Children. How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers.”

Source: The Portable John Adams

“...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.”

Mean Stills Political Social Wealth Half Virtue Democracy Century Position Habit Vices Characteristics Englishmen Half A Century Subservience

Book:Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism

Source: Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism

“The hour of reformation is always delayed; every delay gives vice another opportunity of fortifying itself by habit.”

Giving Opportunity Hours Habit Vices Delay Reformation Delayed Another Opportunity

Book:The Rambler

Source: The Rambler

“Some, either from being glued to vice by a natural attachment, or from long habit, no longer recognize its ugliness.”

Long Natural Habit Vices Attachment Ugliness

Book:Selections from the Essays

Source: Selections from the Essays

“One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won't have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.”

Way Feels Winning Sports Trouble Habit Normal Losing Vices Factors

Book:Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness

Source: Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness

“I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English―it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them―then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice.”