Habit Formation Quotes & Sayings

The Strategy of Scheduling, of setting a specific, regular time for an activity to recur, is one of the most familiar and powerful strategies of habit formation — Gretchen Rubin

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit. — Aristotle.

But once you realize that we are not just thinking things but creatures of habit, you'll then realize that temptation isn't just about bad ideas or wrong decisions; it's often a factor of de-formation and wrongly ordered habits. In other words, our sins aren't just discrete, wrong actions and bad decisions; they reflect vices.25 And overcoming them requires more than just knowledge; it requires rehabituation, a re-formation of our loves. One — James K.A. Smith

What Francis heard on February 24, 1208, was this: go and preach, even without formation or ordination! No gold, no silver, no money not even for alms! No bag for provisions! One habit only! No shoes, no staff! It was an amputation of every superfluous item, of every precaution for life, and, at the same time, of every protection that an institution like the church could provide at the time. It was also a refusal to he recognized as a regular order, a refusal of the legal privileges associated with such status, and a refusal of priestly ordination. Poverty in the institutional sense means to he excluded from privileges.

. . . "No brother is to hold a position of power or a ruling office, especially not among the brothers themselves. No one in this way of living is to be called prior; instead all are to be known simply as minor brothers. And all are to wash one another's feet" (rule of 1221). — Dorothee Solle

The secret of the whole matter is that a habit is not the mere tendency to repeat a certain act, nor is it established by the mere repetition of the act. Habit is a fixed tendency to react or respond in a certain way to a given stimulus; and the formation of habit always involves the two elements, the stimulus and the response or reaction. The indolent lad goes to school not in response to any stimulus in the school itself, but to the pressure of his father's will; when that stimulus is absent, the reaction as a matter of course does not occur. — Edward O. Sisson

A primary requirement in every enterprise in habit-formation is self-confidence. — Ralph Alfred Habas

It is only the dull, sleepy mind that creates and clings to habit. A mind that is attentive from moment to moment - attentive to what it is saying, attentive to the movement of its hands, of its thoughts, of its feelings - will discover that the formation of further habits has come to an end. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Acts of virtue ripen into habits; and the goodly and permanent result is the formation or establishment of a virtuous character. — Thomas Chalmers

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 Inge

Two kinds of clarity support habit formation: clarity of values and clarity of action. The clearer I am about what I value, and what action I expect from myself - not what other people value, or expect from me - the more likely I am to stick to my habits. — Gretchen Rubin

One thing that continually astonishes me is the degree to which we're influenced by sheer convenience. The amount of effort, time, or decision making required by an action has a huge influence on habit formation. — Gretchen Rubin

The traditions of ... bygone times, even to the smallest social particular, enable one to understand more clearly the circumstances with contributed to the formation of character. The daily life into which people are born, and into which they are absorbed before they are well aware, forms chains which only one in a hundred has moral strength enough to despise, and to break when the right time comes - when an inward necessity for independent individual action arises, which is superior to all outward conventionalities. Therefore it is well to know what were the chains of daily domestic habit which were the natural leading-strings of our forefathers before they learnt to go alone. — Elizabeth Gaskell