quotes about Habit

A. E. Housman:
A tail behind, a trunk in front,
Complete the usual elephant.
The tail in front, the trunk behind,
Is what you very seldom find.
If you for specimens should hunt
With trunks behind and tails in front,
That hunt would occupy you long
The force of habit is so strong.
Annie Dillard:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Aristotle:
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
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.
Charles Kettering:
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman:
Habits of thought persist through the centuries; and while a healthy brain may reject the doctrine it no longer believes, it will continue to feel the same sentiments formerly associated with that doctrine.
Mark Twain:
To cease smoking is the easiest thing I ever did; I ought to know because I’ve done it a thousand times.
Spanish proverb:
Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.
Thomas Jefferson:
He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual.
William James:
But actions originally prompted by conscious intelligence may grow so automatic by dint of habit as to be apparently unconsciously performed. Standing, walking, buttoning and unbuttoning, piano-playing, talking, even saying one’s prayers, may be done when the mind is absorbed in other things. The performances of animal instinct seem semi-automatic, and the reflex acts of self-preservation certainly are so. Yet they resemble intelligent acts in bringing about the same ends at which the animals’ consciousness, on other occasions, deliberately aims.