In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Henri-Frederic Amiel
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It seems, in theory, that I should be able to control at least a few of my bad habits. The problem is that my habits make me depressed, and the depression makes me want to indulge my habits and so I do. There isn't any solution to this.
John S. Hall
As man does not live in a solitary state, habits and feeling develop within him which are useful for the preservation of society and the propagation of the race. Without social feelings and usages life in common would have been absolutely impossible. It is not law which has established them; they are anterior to all law. Neither is it religion which has ordained them; they are anterior to all religions. They are found amongst all animals living in society. They are spontaneously developed by the new nature of things, like those habits in animals which men call instinct. They spring from a process of evolution, which is useful, and, indeed, necessary, to keep society together in the struggle it is forced to maintain for existence.
Peter Kropotkin
If you have given way to anger, be sure that over and above the evil involved therein, you have strengthened the habit, and added fuel to the fire. If overcome by a temptation of the flesh, do not reckon it a single defeat, but that you have also strengthened your dissolute habits. Habits and faculties are necessarily affected by the corresponding acts... One who has had fever, even when it has left him, is not in the same condition of health as before, unless indeed his cure is complete. Something of the same sort is true also of diseases of the mind. Behind, there remains a legacy of traces and of blisters: and unless these are effectually erased, subsequent blows on the same spot will produce no longer mere blisters, but sores. If you do not wish to be prone to anger, do not feed the habit; give it nothing which may tend to its increase. At first, keep quiet and count the days when you were not angry: 'I used to be angry every day, then every other day: next every two, next every three days!' and if you succeed in passing thirty days, sacrifice to the Gods in thanksgiving. (75).
Epictetus
Life becomes meaningful and all activities are purposeful only on the basis of faith in the enduring reality. … The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality in the midst of infinite change. Once, one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives, one recognises all of life as his life, everybody's interests as his own. One is no longer bound by habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future — One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in realization.
Meher Baba
Old Habits plus Old Technology have predictable consequences. Old Habits, that are hard to change, plus New Technology can have dramatically altered consequences.
Al Gore
Amiel, Henri-Frederic
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