habits

The mere lapse of years is not life. To eat, to drink, and sleep; to be exposed to darkness and the light; to pace around in the mill of habit, and turn thought into an instrument of trade-this is not life. Knowledge, truth, love, beauty, goodness, faith, alone can give vitality to the mechanism of existence.

A precisian professor had the habit of saying: "... quartic polynomial ax^4+bx^3+cx^2+dx+e , where e need not be the base of the natural logarithms."

How shall I a habit break? As you did that habit make; As you gathered you must loose; As you yielded, now refuse. Thread by thread the strand we twist Till they bind us neck and wrist; Thread by thread the patient hand Must untwine ere free we stand; As we builded stone by stone, We must toil, unhelped, alone, Till the wall is overthrown.

It's not a bad idea to get in the habit of writing down one's thoughts. It saves one having to bother anyone else with them.

A single bad habit will mar an otherwise faultless character, as an ink-drop soileth the pure white page.

Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.

On Descartes' Discourse "Touching the method of Using One's Reason Rightly and of Seeking Scientific Truth" It is because the body is a machine that education is possible. Education is the formation of habits, a superinducing of an artificial organization upon the natural organization of the body.

A love of flowers would beget early rising, industry, habits of close observation, and of reading. It would incline the mind to notice natural phenomena, and to reason upon them. It would occupy the mind with pure thoughts, and inspire a sweet and gentle enthusiasm; maintain simplicity of taste; and . . . unfold in the heart an enlarged, unstraightened, ardent piety.

The creative habit is like a drug. The particular obsession changes, but the excitement, the thrill of your creation lasts.

Most affections are habits or duties we lack the courage to end.