13 Habits Quotes

Warren Buffett is one of the best learning machines on this earth. The turtles which outrun the hares are learning machines. If you stop learning in this world, the world rushes right by you. ~ Lucas Remmerswaal

I went to an audition the other day, they were casting 13 people to be clouds, 14 people showed up, it was overcast. ~ Jay London

With impeccable prose, dry wit, and uncommon wisdom, Ted Thompson brings to life one family's painful disappointments and powerful resilience. The Land of Steady Habits combines Austen's shrewd mastery of domestic economics with Updike's compassion for the melancholy commuter to make something elegant, fresh, and brilliant. ~ Maggie Shipstead

We can use decision-making to choose the habits we want to form, use willpower to get the habit started, then - and this is the best part - we can allow the extraordinary power of habit to take over. At that point, we're free from the need to decide and the need to use willpower. ~ Gretchen Rubin

We had a dog, Apples. He was 13 years old, toothless, blind and had the worst breath this side of Jabba the Hut. But he was the sweetest dog, and I cried and cried when he died. ~ Marlee Matlin

When I was 13 I told my dad I'd rather kill myself than do an ordinary job. He vaguely muttered something about how I'd need to earn a living somehow, but he's been totally behind me, forking out money he didn't really have to send me to university. Every other comedian I've met had to fight their parents to be allowed to do this but mine have been brilliant. ~ Noel Fielding

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. ~ Thomas Hobbes

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin. ~ Edward Gibbon

New starts are rare in this life, and they become rarer the older you get. When you are little and everything is before you, you can become anything, anything at all, but as you get older, you calcify, get stiffer, less able to stretch and bend. Before you even realize it, your personality is a habit. Your mistakes are habits. Everything about you is a habit, and the chances to break them are slimmer and slimmer. ~ Andra Brynn

Later, when I was a new mother, I recognized her somewhat awestruck fascination with me. When you are fully immersed in the daily care and quirks and habits of a small, dependent child, an older kid who is articulate, civilized, and capable of moving around in the world without getting itself killed can seem as supernatural as a wizard. ~ Kate Moses

Overhead the sky was melting, the cracked cream color rubbing off in cogs of brine.
The fields far ahead of me in endless pudding, studded here and there with what had been: homes and houses, hair and heirlooms, habits, hallways, hauntings, hope. ~ Blake Butler

Habits, Andrea, are concrete forms of rhythm, are that portion of rhythm which helps to keep us alive. ~ Julio Cortazar

Of all mankind's unpleasant habits, sheer and willful cruelty is the most base, the least forgivable and, when carried to its extreme, perhaps the most horrific. ~ Christopher Riche Evans

The Creed for the Sociopathic Obsessive Compulsive (Peter's Laws)


1. If anything can go wrong, Fix it!!! (To hell with Murphy!!)
2. When given a choice - Take Both!!
3. Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
4. Start at the top, then work your way up.
5. Do it by the book... but be the author!
6. When forced to compromise, ask for more.
7. If you can't beat them, join them, then beat them.
8. If it's worth doing, it's got to be done right now.
9. If you can't win, change the rules.
10. If you can't change the rules, then ignore them.
11. Perfection is not optional.
12. When faced without a challenge, make one.
13. "No" simply means begin again at one level higher.
14. Don't walk when you can run.
15. Bureaucracy is a challenge to be conquered with a righteous attitude, a tolerance for stupidity, and a bulldozer when necessary.
16. When in doubt: THINK!
17. Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
18. The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
19. The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
20. The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!! ~ Peter Safar

The primitive Christians perpetually trod on mystic ground, and their minds were exercised by the habits of believing the most extraordinary events ~ Edward Gibbon

My fan base is really, really young. They're the youngest demographic that you can track on YouTube: 13- to 17-year-old females. But the fan mail that I get in my P.O. box, they're all from moms and from kids who are two years old, three years old, four years old. ~ Rosanna Pansino

The best way to stop a bad habit is never to begin it. ~ James Cash Penney

It's the so-called small habits that matter the most. How you talk to yourself. The books you choose to read. Who you share your energy with. Who you allow to have access to you. These are the habits that ultimately shape your life. ~ Clyde Lee Dennis

Untested assumptions and lazy habits of thought can be shown up, once put in a spotlight of a different hue. ~ Julian Baggini

It's like this for all of us initially. We can contact our inner strength, our natural openness, for short periods before getting swept away. And this is excellent, heroic, a huge step in interrupting and weakening our ancient habits. If we keep a sense of humor and stay with it for the long haul, the ability to be present just naturally evolves. Gradually we lose our appetite for biting the hook. We lose our appetite for aggression. If ~ Pema Chodron

Yoga takes us to an unconditioned freedom, because yoga sees even good habits as a form of conditioning or limitation. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

Take the case of prostitutes, a group more or less available every night. As a young man, Proust had been a compulsive masturbator, so compulsive that his father had urged him to go to a brothel, to take his mind off what the nineteenth century considered to be a highly dangerous pastime. In a candid letter to his grandfather, sixteen-year-old Marcel described how the visit had gone: I so badly needed to see a woman in order to stop my bad habits of masturbating that papa gave me 10 francs to go to the brothel. But, 1st in my excitement, I broke the chamber pot, 3 francs, 2nd in this same excitement, I wasn't able to have sex. So now I'm back to square one, constantly waiting for another 10 francs to empty myself and for 3 more francs for that pot. ~ Alain De Botton

bit of inaccurate information that somehow concerned crop or commodity market information or conditions. It does not matter whether you sent that message by telephone or mail or telegraph. It does not matter who you sent that letter to. It does not matter whether the information was actually false, or merely misleading. It does not matter whether your note actually had any effect on market prices anywhere, or even whether you intended for it to have that effect. The way this law was written by the morons in Congress, you are guilty of a felony if you send a postcard to your grandmother in a nursing home, trying to make her feel better by lying about how nice the weather has been in Florida, or how low the gas prices have been. And you will not find this law in Title 18 either; this one is buried in the bowels of Title 7 (sec. 13), which lists the laws supposedly regulating "Agriculture." Even ~ James Duane

Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-yr-old girl. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. ~ Lao-Tzu

The point is not that books, magazines, and DVDs are dead - far from it. At places such as the redesigned Boston Public Library, popular publications and media materials in physical form circulate rapidly from prominent spaces close to the building's entrance. The point is that people's information habits have undergone a sea change - a major shift toward the digital. Libraries are trying to serve a wide range of patrons at many different points along an "adoption curve," with all-print at one end and all-digital at the other. ~ John Palfrey

But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army, and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline, idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone. All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he who kills most people receives the highest rewards. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I love tennis. I've played it my whole life. Loved it since the age of three. I had an injury, so from the age of 13 to 24 I didn't play much. Then when I moved out to L.A., there were so many tennis courts that I rekindled the love. ~ David Walton

I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits. ~ Kent Beck

Abram, having failed in Genesis 13, comes through with flying colors in this battle of faith because he aligns himself with God, and he refuses to allow his heart to be compromised by the possibility of taking the riches that this world can offer. ~ Ligon Duncan

All your children shall be taught by the LORD, and great shall be the peace of your children. ISAIAH 54:13 ~ Stormie O'martian

Secrets. Everyone has them. The light of day and truth reveal some secrets to be nagging obsessions or habits, while other secrets may be as incriminating as a literal decaying skeleton in one's closet. ~ Kenn Bivins

The history of the bagel suggests that Americans' shifting, blended, multi-ethnic eating habits are signs neither of postmodern decadence, ethnic fragmentation, nor corporate hegemony. If we do not understand how a bagel could sometimes be Jewish, sometimes be "New York," and sometimes be American, or why it is that Pakistanis now sell bagels to both Anglos and Tejanos in Houston, it is in part because we have too hastily assumed that our tendency to cross cultural boundaries in order to eat ethnic foods is a recent development - and a culinary symptom of all that has gone wrong with contemporary culture.

It is not. The bagel tells a different kind of American tale. It high- lights ways that the production, exchange, marketing, and consumption of food have generated new identities - for foods and eaters alike. ~ Donna Gabaccia

How do cultures differ from one another? Above all, in their customs. Tell me how you dress, how you act, what are your habits, which gods you honor, and I will tell you who you are. Man not only creates culture, he carries it around with him. Man is culture. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

I go all the way back to the Hot Boys days and being 13, listening to this dude. Just remembering the staple he put on the game back then all the way to now, to have that longevity years beyond it. So for him to actually acknowledge what I'm doing right now and seeing it as a path, the same way the longevity he created, it's a great feeling to actually share that same stage and a moment with him. Wayne ain't no new jack to this game. He influenced a lot of styles and a lot of sounds. I would say I was influenced by a recent sound and flow, and cadence that he brung to the game. ~ Kanye West

The harder it is to do something, the harder it is to do it impulsively, so inconvenience helps us stick to good habits. There are six obvious ways to make an activity less convenient: Increase the amount of physical or mental energy required (leave the cell phone in another room, ban smoking inside or near a building). • Hide any cues (put the video game controller on a high shelf). • Delay it (read email only after 11:00 a.m.). • Engage in an incompatible activity (to avoid snacking, do a puzzle). • Raise the cost (one study showed that people at high risk for smoking were pleased by a rise in the cigarette tax; after London imposed a congestion charge to enter the center of the city, people's driving habits changed, with fewer cars on the road and more use of public transportation). • Block it altogether (give away the TV set). ~ Gretchen Rubin

Once I got to high school and auditioned for a play and got in, I thought this was really what I was looking for. Once that had got cleared up, from 13 on, that was it. ~ Joan Allen