Habitual Quotes

[...] proficiency in inferring the large-scale and small-scale structure of our immediate environment, or any features of parts of the universe distant from our ancestral stomping grounds, was of no relevance to our ancestors' reproductive fitness. Hence, there is no reason to imagine that our habitual intuitions and inferential responses are well designed for science or for metaphysics. ~ James Ladyman

The habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns. ~ Alan Watts

A community is infinitely more brutalised by the habitual employment of punishment than it is by the occasional occurence of crime. ~ Oscar Wilde

When you've had a life of overthinking, you have the same reaction time and time again. Shyness becomes habitual. When you're put in an unfamiliar situation, all you want to do is retreat and hide by default. You watch but don't participate. You listen but don't respond. You read, but rarely comment. You take a photo, but you rarely post. You write, but you rarely publish. All of this is because your overthinking mind cannot stop thinking about how you will be perceived by the outside world. ~ Joel Annesley

Will you call me?" she asked helplessly. "Will you call me again, Evan?"

"Well of course I will," he said, looking back to smile at her in a way that would soon become habitual: a mixture of pity, fond teasing, and readiness for love. ~ Richard Yates

This is what language is:
a habitual grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this:
which hurts
just enough to be a scar
And heals just enough to be a nation. ~ Eavan Boland

Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing "incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality" to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that "no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives." Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but "republican fanaticism" for the current "avalanche of destruction. ~ Harold Holzer

Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness. ~ Adam Smith

Others will always show you exactly where you are stuck. They say or do something and you automatically get hooked into a familiar way of reacting - shutting down, speeding up, or getting all worked up. When you react in the habitual way, with anger, greed, and so forth, it gives you a chance to see your patterns and work with them honestly and compassionately. Without others provoking you, you remain ignorant of your painful habits and cannot train in transforming them into the path of awakening. ~ Pema Chodron

I'm not a habitual practitioner of the art of face-painting. ~ Akiko Higashimura

Floating"

Our canoe idles in the idling current
Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed
Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;
Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted
Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.
All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,

Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,
Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,
We lie in each other's arms and let the palps
Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back
All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.
Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,
Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro;
Sing the wandering erotic melodies
Of men and women gone seven hundred years,
Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.
Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,
Let your breasts in their thin cover
Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;
Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;
Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.
As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,
Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.
Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,
Take me slowly w ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Dexter had been led to believe, by TV, by films, that the only up-side of sickness was that it brought people closer, that there would be an opening-up, an effortless understanding between them. But they have always been close, always been open, and their habitual understanding has instead been replaced by bitterness, resentment, a rage on both their parts at what is happening. ~ David Nicholls

You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving. ~ Cornel West

Orpheus chose to be the leader of mankind. Ah, not even Orpheus had attained such a goal, not even his immortal greatness had justified such vain and presumptuous dreams of grandeur, such flagrant overestimation of poetry! Certainly many instances of earthly beauty--a song, the twilit sea, the tone of the lyre, the voice of a boy, a verse, a statue, a column, a garden, a single flower--all possess the divine faculty of making man hearken unto the innermost and outermost boundaries of his existence, and therefore it is not to be wondered at that the lofty art of Orpheus was esteemed to have the power of diverting the streams from their beds and changing their courses, of luring the wild beasts of the forest with tender dominance, of arresting the cattle a-browse upon the meadows and moving them to listen, caught in the dream and enchanted, the dreamwish of all art: the world compelled to listen, ready to receive the song and its salvation. However, even had Orpheus achieved his aim, the help lasts no longer than the song, nor does the listening, and on no account might the song resound too long, otherwise the streams would return to their old courses, the wild beasts of the forest would again fall upon and slay the innocent beasts of the field, and man would revert again to his old, habitual cruelty; for not only did no intoxication last long, and this was likewise true of beauty's spell, but furthermore, the mildness to which men and beasts had yielded was only half of the in ~ Hermann Broch

Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes - are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

You are wrong if you think Joy emanates only or principally from human relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience. We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living. ~ Jon Krakauer

The best way for children to learn grammar is by making them habitual readers. ~ Love The Stacks Bookstore

It is in rare and scattered instants that beauty smiles even on her adorers, who are reduced for habitual comfort to remembering her past favours. ~ George Santayana

Habit is formed out of memory ... We often shape our present situation according to those habitual memories. Instead of starting fresh, we go back to what we've done in the past ... easier for us than fighting our way through foreign territory. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

Paranoia is habitual. If you get slapped in the face every time you turn a corner, then you'll EXPECT to get slapped in the face every time you turn a corner. ~ Chloe J. Blankenship

Yes, her childlessness was a fugue in itself, a flight- this was the habitual theme she was trying now to resist- a flight from her proper destiny. Her failure to become a woman, as her mother understood the term. ~ Ian McEwan

When we consider reality itself we quickly become aware of its infinite complexity, and we realize that our habitual perception of it is often inadequate. If this were not so, the concept of deception would be meaningless. ~ Dalai Lama

and create many more choices for ourselves. Without conscious attention, we are simply dancing around in the cage of our habitual patterns, thinking we are free ~ Anonymous

Bad luck is usually transmitted by close proximity to habitual sufferers. ~ Irvine Welsh

But as long as you have some fixed idea or are caught by some habitual way of doing things, you cannot appreciate things in their true sense. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

Indefinite visions of ambition are weak against the ease of doing what is habitual or beguilingly agreeable. ~ George Eliot

By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment. ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

What had I done but extend my rootlessness, the series of false starts that became more difficult to defend as I got older? I think I hoped I would feel new in a new country, but I wasn't new here, and if there was comfort in the idea that my habitual unease had a cause, that if I was ill-fitted to the place there was good reason, it was a false comfort, a way of running away from real remedy. But ~ Garth Greenwell

Moment to moment we act freely, we make decisions and form opinions and there is very little to throttle us. We think each of us has a map marked with private routings and preferred habitual destinations, and go by a legend of our own. Yet it turns out you can overlay them and see a most amazing correspondence; what you believed were very personal contours aligning not exactly but enough that while our via points may diverge, our endings do not. ~ Chang-rae Lee

Our senses, our appetites, and our passions, are our lawful and faithful guides, in most things that relate solely to this life; and, therefore, by the hourly necessity of consulting them, we gradually sink into an implicit submission, and habitual confidence. Every act of compliance with their motions facilitates a second compliance, every new step towards depravity is made with less reluctance than the former, and thus the descent to life merely sensual is perpetually accelerated. ~ Samuel Johnson

When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it. ~ Marcus Aurelius

I have full faith in people. I think that we have the ability to change. We're habitual creatures. Once we figure out that bad habit and identify it, whether it's behavioral or whatever it may be, we change our habits. Obviously, I'm simplifying it and making it sound very easy to do, and we all know it's very difficult, but it's doable. ~ Eva Mendes

It is the duty of every generation of writers and artists to find fresh ways of expressing the habitual circumstances of the human condition. To serve up the lukewarm remains of yesterdays dinner is easy, profitable and popular, (for a while). It is also wrong. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Between life's stimuli and our habitual responses exists choice. ~ Ken Wilber

ADUNCITY (ADU'NCITY) n.s.[aduncitas, Lat.]Crookedness; flexure inwards; hookedness. There can be no question, but the aduncity of the pounces, and beaks of the hawks, is the cause of the great and habitual immorality of those animals.Arbuthnot and Pope'sMart. Scrib. ~ Samuel Johnson

Van tortured himself with thoughts of insufficient filial affection - a long story of unconcern, amused scorn, physical repulsion, and habitual dismissal. He looked around, making wild amends, willing her spirit to give him an unequivocal, and indeed all-deciding sign, of continued being behind the veil of time, beyond the flesh of space. But no response came, not a petal fell on his bench, not a gnat touched his hand. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I try to remember the things that keep me peaceful, happy, and compassionate. I constantly write notes on my phone about little discoveries I make in terms of perspective and habitual thought patterns. My memory seems to let me down, so this really helps me. ~ Richard Brancatisano

Why do I love you? Because you looked into my eyes and saw me. Behind the painted beauty, the forced expressions, the practiced gestures and habitual politeness, you saw me - the pure, vulnerable core that is my true essence. Somehow, in a kind but knowing glimpse you stripped away the façade, and I will never forget the relief it was to finally be seen. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The mind becomes accustomed to things by the habitual sight of them, and neither wonders nor inquires about the reasons for things it sees all the time. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

What I'm advocating here is something that requires courage - the courage to have a change of heart. The reason this requires courage is because when we don't do the habitual thing, hardening our heart and holding tightly to certain views, then we're left with the underlying uneasiness that we were trying to get away from. Whenever there's a sense of threat, we harden. And so if we don't harden, what happens? We're left with that uneasiness, that feeling of threat. That's when the real journey of courage begins. This is the real work of the peacemaker, to find the soft spot and the tenderness in that very uneasy place and stay with it. If we can stay with the soft spot and stay with the tender heart, then we are cultivating the seeds of peace ~ Pema Chodron

I've found that the chief difficulty for most people was to realize that they had really heard new things: that is things that they had never heard before. They kept translating what they heard into their habitual language. They had ceased to hope and believe there might be anything new. ~ P.D. Ouspensky

Over time, we learn life lessons we don't forget, and we adapt in response to the growing demands of our circumstances. Eventually, new ways of thinking and acting become habitual. There comes a day when we can hardly remember our immature former selves. We've adapted, those adaptations have become durable, and, finally, our identity - the sort of person we see ourselves to be - has evolved. We've matured. ~ Angela Duckworth

Without someone speaking into your life and keeping you on track with the things you believe, you have a tendency to drift into habitual sin- and you recognize this about yourself. ~ Craig Groeschel

leadership is more than hard work; it is habitual work. It is worked out every day in the tasks we complete, the ways we approach our work, and the rhythms we nurture in our lives. It hangs on the hooks of the patterns we create, not just the success we may stumble upon. ~ Brad Lomenick

Habitual caution ties and binds us; it is as if we were dressed always in clothes and shoes that were several sizes too small. ~ Laura Huxley

It is from the middle class that writers spring, because, it is in the middle class only that the practice of writing is as natural and habitual as hoeing a field or building a house. ~ Virginia Woolf

Addicts, in a very general but foundational sense, are constitutionally unable to put themselves first. They have spent their lives avoiding putting themselves first, hiding themselves and their problems behind habitual and destructive behaviours. ~ Morteza Khaleghi

The way to know about championship quality is to learn from champions, and that I did; studying them with professional purpose during my time in the ring and from habitual interest afterward. ~ Gene Tunney

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not enough. ~ Pema Chodron

Friendship is a strong and habitual inclination in two persons to promote the good and happiness in another. ~ Eustace Budgell

Over-familiar, the music has become a kind of audio-Valium, background music rather than something I listen to actively and attentively. A gin and tonic after a long day. A shame, I think, because while each note remains the same, I used to hear them differently. It used to sound better. ~ David Nicholls

Without habitual self-examination, you can be hypocritical, but not see it. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

As survivors and procreators, we unravel stories that at their root are not dissimilar from the habitual behaviors seen in nature. But as beings who know they will die we digress into episodes and epics that are altogether dissociated from the natural world. We may isolate this awareness, distract ourselves from it, anchor our minds far from its shores, and sublimate it as a motif in our sagas. Yet at no time and in no place are we protected from being tapped on the shoulder and reminded, "You're going to die, you know." However much we try to ignore it, our consciousness haunts us with this knowledge. Our heads were baptized in the font of death; they are doused with the horror of moribundity. ~ Thomas Ligotti

In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

In my own case, who have spent my whole life in the practice of virtue, right conduct from habitual has become natural. ~ Sallust

Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions. ~ Emil Cioran

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats - and disgraces - and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned ~ Ernest J. King

Imagine your mind as a garden and thoughts as the seeds you plant. Habitual negative, unhealthy, self-critical thoughts produce the weeds and thistles of depression, discontent, and anxiety in the garden of your mind. Luckily, the opposite is also true. Consistently planting positive, healthy, constructive thoughts will yield a crop of beautiful feelings, such as gratitude, love, and joy. ~ Sue Thoele

And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within, and from the habitual union of their souls with God in deep faith and charity. ~ Thomas Merton

You are lovable. Can you show me any baby in any nursery who isn't priceless? No. There's no such thing as a worthless newborn. And the essential value that was born into brand-new-baby you can never be extinguished. This means that even if you think you're being absolutely honest, believing yourself to be anything other than astonishing, incomparable, and infinitely precious makes you a habitual liar. ~ Martha Beck

Emerson argued that "the whole secret of the teacher's force lies in the conviction that men are convertible, and they are. They want awakening, [and for that purpose they need teachers] to get the soul out of bed, out of her deep habitual sleep." That ~ Huston Smith

The great majority of habitual drinkers are born not only without desire for alcohol, but with actual repugnance toward it. Not the first, nor the twentieth, nor the hundredth drink, succeeded in giving them the liking. But they learned, just as men learn to smoke; though it is far easier to learn to smoke than to learn to drink. They learned because alcohol was so accessible. ~ Jack London

Never assume that habitual silence means ability in reserve. ~ Geoffrey Madan

They say: misfortunes, sufferings...well, if someone said to me right now, this minute: do you want to remain the way you were before captivity, or live through it all over again? For God's sake, captivity again and horsemeat! Once we're thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it's only here that the new and the good begins. As long as there's life, there's happiness. There's much, much still to come. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Mental life consists, according to the textbooks, of thought and feeling, according to the poets, of addressing an inner voice (or voices), and according to the dramatists, of internal monologues. In my experience however it consists mainly of intermittent silences, and humming. Humming accompanies habitual and semi-automatic activities, as well as stoppages. Humming accompanies a sort of incomplete concentration on oneself. Humming is characteristic of psychological states in which we are not exactly miserable, and states in which we are not exactly ecstatic. Which amounts I think to more or less always. ~ Miroslav Holub

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts. ~ Blaise Pascal

Setting out is always a leap of faith, a risk in the deepest sense of the term, and yet an adventure too. The familiar and the habitual are so falsely reassuring, and most of us make our homes there permanently. The new is always by definition unfamiliar and untested, so God, life, destiny, suffering have to give us a push--usually a big one--or we will not go. ~ Richard Rohr

Waiting is a state of mind that says we want what we don't have. Therefore, with every kind of waiting we produce an inner conflict between now and the projected future. This greatly reduces the quality of our life. Are you a 'habitual waiter'? ~ Eckhart Tolle

But the economic meltdown should have undone, once and for all, the idea of poverty as a personal shortcoming or dysfunctional state of mind. The lines at unemployment offices and churches offering free food includes strivers as well as slackers, habitual optimists as well as the chronically depressed. When and if the economy recovers we can never allow ourselves to forget how widespread our vulnerability is, how easy it is to spiral down toward destitution. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Complete nudity in itself is not erotic. It becomes so only when preceeded by or contrasted to a state of dress. In this limited context then, all clothes become somewhat immoral, if we define immorality as inciting sexual interest. Habitual nakedness may indeed be capable of elevating man to a higher mental plane ~ Lucy Irvine

If you stay in bed all day with the covers over your head, if you overeat for the millionth time in your life, if you get drunk, if you get stoned, if it's just this habitual thing that you think is going to make you feel better, you know that's going to depress you and make you more discouraged. ~ Pema Chodron

When you absolutely trust someone, you are open, you are the real you, which fosters the closest possible relationship. Trust breeds more trust, which encourages habitual honestly from both parties. ~ Joshua Fields Millburn

Make the difficult habitual, the habitual easy, and the easy beautiful. ~ Constantin S. Stanislavski

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements. ~ Herbert Spencer

It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives. ~ John Adams

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. ~ John Adams

Magic is a sudden opening of the mind to the wonder of existence. It is a sense that there is much more to life than we usually recognize; that we do not have to be confined by the limited views that our family, our society, or our own habitual thoughts impose on us; that life contains many dimensions, depths, textures, and meanings extending far beyond our familiar beliefs and concepts. ~ John Welwood

In the week I promised myself I should naturally read, for to the habitual reader reading is a drug of which he is the slave; deprive him of printed matter and he grows nervous, moody, and restless; then, like the alcoholic bereft of brandy who will drink shellac or methylated spirit, he will make do with the advertisements of a paper five years old; he will make do with a telephone directory. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

We believe there are certain things people "have," certain things people "do," and even certain things people "are." These beliefs do not necessarily reflect the structure of reality they simply reflect an habitual way of talking about reality. ~ Neil Postman

Cultivate the habit of defining, refining, redefining and redeeming your opportunities. Failure is a temporal event, not a permanent trademark. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

In his room, his hotel room. Not is his bed, his hotel bed. Bill paced and Bill paced. Bill thinking and Bill thinking. Bill knew failure could become habitual, defeat become routine. Routine and familiar. Familiar and accepted. Accepted and permanent. Permanent and imprisoning. Imprisoning and suffocating. Bill knew failure carried chains. Chains to bind you. You and your dreams. To bind you and your dreams alive. Bill know defeat carries spades. Spades to bury you. You and your hopes. To bury you and your hopes alive. Bill knew you had to fight against failure. With every bone in your body. Bill knew you had to struggle against defeat. With every drop of your blood. You had to fight against failure, you had to struggle against defeat. For your dreams and for your hopes. For you and for the people. To fight and to struggle. For the dreams of the people,
for the hopes of people. ~ David Peace

Your personality is so convinced that the habit thoughts running along with your body are you that it comes up with any number of reasons why replacing those thoughts is impossible. Even if those reasons can be addressed rationally, there is still an emotional component that is often reticent to admit that it is already talking to itself all the time. Repeating the same thoughts over and over, reacting to events in the same habitual way day in and day out, entertaining the same memories, most of which are based on pain and loss – the personality keeps the moment-to-moment awareness overwhelmed with the sense of a personal history in order to maintain the continuity of its artificial identity. ~ William Douglas Horden

the person who has arrived at a habitual state of unconditional love will find anything less to be unacceptable ~ David Hawkins

Whatever you habitually think yourself to be, that you are. You must form, now, a greater and better habit; you must form a conception of yourself as a being of limitless power, and habitually think that you are that being. It is the habitual, not the periodical thought that decides your destiny. ~ Wallace D. Wattles

Dialogue is a space where we may see the assumptions which lay beneath the surface of our thoughts, assumptions which drive us, assumptions around which we build organizations, create economies, form nations and religions. These assumptions become habitual, mental habits that drive us, confuse us and prevent our responding intelligently to the challenges we face every day. ~ David Bohm

Tavi spent an eternity in misery, longing for death to bring sweet release from the unrelenting torment. The others gathered at the side of his bunk on the ship, keeping a deathwatch over him.

"I don't see what all the drama is about," Demos said, his quiet voice filled with habitual disinterst. "He's seasick. It will pass."~Captain's Fury ~ Jim Butcher

I notice well that one stray step from the habitual path leads irresistibly into a new direction. Life moves forward, it never reverses its course. ~ Franz Grillparzer

It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual. ~ Lascelles Abercrombie

What do we mean - it is a common term of praise - when we say that a book is "original"? Not, usually, that the writer has invented something without precedent, but that she has made us "perceive" what we already, in a conceptual sense, "know", by deviating from the conventional, habitual ways of representing reality. Defamiliarization, in short, is another word for "originality". I shall have recourse to it again in these glances at the art of fiction. ~ David Lodge

Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior is called awareness training, and like AA's insistence on forcing alcoholics to recognize their cues, it's the first step in habit reversal training. The tension that Mandy felt in her nails cued her nail biting habit. ~ Charles Duhigg

The last two - distractions and fears - are the dangerous ones. They're the habitual demons that invade the launch of any project. No one starts a creative endeavor without a certain amount of fear; the key is to learn how to keep free-floating fears from paralyzing you before you've begun. When I feel that sense of dread, I try to make it as specific as possible. ~ Twyla Tharp

We are so little affected by things which are habitual, that we consider this idea of the decision of a majority as if it were a law of our original nature: but such constructive whole, residing in a part only, is one of the most violent fictions of positive law, that ever has been or can be made on the principles of artificial incorporation. Out of civil society nature knows nothing of it; nor are men, even when arranged according to civil order, otherwise than by very long training, brought at all to submit to it. . . . This mode of decision, where wills may be so nearly equal, where, according to circumstances, the smaller number may be the stronger force, and where apparent reason may be all upon one side, and on the other little else than impetuous appetite; all this must be the result of a very particular and special convention, confirmed afterwards by long habits of obedience, by a sort of discipline in society, and by a strong hand, vested with stationary, permanent power, to enforce this sort of constructive general will. ~ Edmund Burke

The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone. ~ C.S. Lewis

If she allowed herself to wallow in self-pity, she would be in danger of becoming one of those habitual moaners and complainers everyone avoided. ~ Mary Balogh

I am dropping my keys on the table inside the door before I fully remember. There is no one to hear this news, nowhere to go with the unmade plan, the uncompleted thought. There is no one to agree, disagree, talk back. "I think I am beginning to understand why grief feels like suspense," C. S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife. "It comes from the frustration of so many impulses that had become habitual. Thought after thought, feeling after feeling, action after action, had H. for their object. Now their target is gone. I keep on through habit fitting an arrow to the string, then I remember and have to lay the bow down. So many roads lead thought to H. I set out on one of them. But now there's an impassable frontierpost across it. So many roads once; now so many cul de sacs." We ~ Joan Didion

Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Artists speak to a different part of us, bypassing the cloudy filter of reason and the fears and prejudices of the habitual mind. ~ Wes Nisker

Unless we press the limits, unless we stretch and expand them, unless we can accept at least the possibility that we may be wrong, or blinkered, or wrapped in our own habitual and familiar vision, we will never even see the prison bars we have constructed, let alone be able to break free of them. ~ Sue Vincent

We all stood in the vast theater of ancient Ephesus ... and had our picture taken. ... We add what dignity we can to a stately ruin with our green umbrellas and jackasses, but it is little," Mark Twain reported with his habitual humor. ~ Sabine Arque