Habit

Habit and routine are great veils over our existence. As long as they are securely in place, we need not consider what life means; its meaning seems sufficiently incarnate in the triumph of the daily habit. When the social fabric is rent, however, man is suddenly thrust outside, away from habits and norms he once accepted automatically. There, on the outside, his questioning begins.
~ William E. Barrett, Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1958).

Custom is a very potent factor to be taken into consideration, for the average man is conservative and accepts innovations with great reluctance.
~ William Jennings Bryan, in the Congressional Record (5 June 1894). Money

I feel guilty . . . it's compulsive. I should go to one of those places where they shock you or do something or show you old reruns of "Gilligan's Island" to make you give up smoking.
~ "Johnny" William Carson (of his addiction to cigarettes), (1979).

Let me beseech you to resolve to free yourselves from the slavery of the tea and coffee and other slop-kettle, if, unhappily, you have been bred up in such slavery. Experience has taught me, that those slops are injurious to health.
~ William Cobbett, Advice to Young Men: And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life (1829). Letter I: To A Youth

Retired to their tea and scandal, according to their ancient custom.
~ William Congreve, The Double Dealer (1694).

He that sips often, at last drinks it up.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Progress of Error

The slaves of custom and established mode,
With pack-horse constancy we keep the road
Crooked or straight, through quags or thorny dells,
True to the jingling of our leader's bells.
~ William Cowper, Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools (1784).

Organizational self-congratulation is habit-forming, and most human institutions are far gone in addiction.
~ John William Gardner, No Easy Victories (1968).

In this country, don't forget, a habit is no damn private hell. There's no solitary confinement outside of jail. A habit is hell for those you love.
~ Billie Holiday (of a drug habit), Lady Sings the Blues (1956 autobiography).

Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge

Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habit, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
~ William James

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890).

Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test.
~ William James, Psychology: The Briefer Course (1893).

Man lives by habits, indeed, but what he lives for is thrills and excitements.
~ William James, Speech before the international World's Peace Congress, Boston MA (7 October 1904).

Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). The Laws of Habit

New habits can be launched . . . on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). The Laws of Habit

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, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (March 1899). The Laws of Habit

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890). Vol. 1. Chapter IV: Habit

To make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy . . . we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague.
~ William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890).

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up (1938).

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
~ W. Somerset Maugham

There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most habits are tools to help us through life.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Enduring habits I hate. . . . Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882). Book IV

Now the way of life that I preach is a habit to be acquired gradually by long and steady repetition. It is the practice of living for the day only, and for the day's work.
~ William Osler, An address delivered to Yale students (20 April 1913). A Way of Life

Thoroughness is the most difficult habit to acquire, but it is the pearl of great price, worth all the worry and trouble of the search.
~ William Osler, Farewell address given to American and Canadian Medical students, McGill University (1892). The Student Life

What do drunkards do? They ... drink ... themselves ... to ... death.
~ William Buehler Seabrook, No Hiding Place (1942).

Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

For use almost can change the stamp of nature.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene iv

How use doth breed a habit in a man!
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona

When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habits and don't know how to eliminate them effectively.
~ William (W.) Clement Stone

Strive for self control by forming good habits before bad ones fasten themselves upon you. A thread can be broken, but a rope will hang you.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday, Show Thyself a Man (Sermon)

I just read this great science fiction story. It's about how machines take control of humans and turn them into zombie slaves! . . . HEY! What time is it?? My TV show is on!
~ Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes

It's always hard to recover after a loss. . . . I have to know when it's time to step up, not to revert back to bad habits but to keep ahead with the good ones.
~ Venus Williams, The Associated Press (26 July 2002). Venus Williams Wants Return to No. 1