Habit Forming Quotes & Sayings

You young folks today think you invented the world," Aunt Will said. "Still, a dash of unlawful scrumping might work for you. A lot more folks have tried that recipe than my own, even if we don't hear testimonials."
She chuckled naughtily at that suggestion. Jesse giggled a bit herself.
The important thing was that her aunt was nodding and smiling again.
"But beware, DuJess," Aunt Will told her. "Every cure has its side effects. It only seems fair to warn you. I suspect that a regular tonic of Piney Baxley can be potently habit forming. — Pamela Morsi

Your habits play a massive role in your sinful nature. Our habits are shaped by either a self-disciplined will, or a powerful felt need - and the latter can often pull us into habitual sin. If you really think about it, most sin is derived from a habit that has been formed over an extensive period of time, and then exposes itself when that habit yearns to be activated. On the other hand, forming habits of prayer and worship can also create virtuous habits that can counteract the destructive pull toward sin. — Jarrid Wilson

A company can begin to determine its product's habit-forming potential by plotting two factors: frequency (how often the behavior occurs) and perceived utility (how useful and rewarding the behavior is in the user's mind over alternative solutions). — Nir Eyal

I never drink water. I'm afraid it will become habit-forming. — W.C. Fields

The sensitive person's hostility to the machine is in one sense unrealistic, because of the obvious fact that the machine has come to stay. But as an attitude of mind there is a great deal to be said for it. The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug - that is, grudgingly and suspiciously. Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes. — George Orwell

This is the only advice I offer you. Pick the small thing, and carry it on. Let it change your life. — Anna White

Habit-forming products alleviate users' pain by relieving a pronounced itch. — Nir Eyal

Being an absolute ruler today was not as simple as people thought. At least, it was not simple if your ambitions included being an absolute ruler tomorrow. There were subtleties. Oh, you could order men to smash down doors and drag people off the dungeons without trial, but too much of that sort of thing lacked style and anyway was bad for business, habit-forming and very, very dangerous for your health. A thinking tyrant, it seemed to Vetinari, had a much harder job than a ruler raised to power by some idiot vote-yourself-rich system like democracy. At least they could tell the people he was their fault. — Terry Pratchett

I've decided that art is a habit-forming drug. That's all it is, for the artist, for the collector, for anybody connected with it. — Marcel Duchamp

Every period of life has its peculiar temptations and dangers. But youth is the time when we are most likely to be ensnared. This, pre-eminently, is the forming, fixing period, the spring season of disposition and habit; and it is during this season, more than any other, that the character assumes its permanent shape and color, and the young are wont to take their course for time and for eternity. — Josiah Johnson Hawes

We can so educate the will power that it will focus the thoughts upon the bright side of things, and upon objects which elevate the soul, thus forming a habit of happiness and goodness which will enrich the whole life. The habit of making the best of everything and of always looking on the bright side is a fortune in itself. — Orison Swett Marden

Coffee has ... expand[ed] humanity's working-day from twelve to a potential twenty-four hours. The tempo, the complexity, the tension of modern life, call for something that can perform the miracle of stimulating brain activity, without evil, habit-forming after-effects. — Margaret Meagher

I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I'll tell you how you'll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit forming. — Warren Buffett

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
E'en in Australia art thou still more hot
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May
(Since that's your winter it don't mean a lot)
Sometimes too bright the eye of heaven shines
And bushfires start through half of New South Wales
Just so, when I do see thy bosom's lines
A fire consumes me and my breathing fails
But thine eternal summer shall not fade
This is in no way due to global warming;
Nay, from thy breasts shall verses fair be made
So damn compulsive they are habit-forming
So long as men can read and eyes can see
So long lives this, thou 34DD
(Based on an idea by William Shakespeare. I'm sure he'd agree that I've improved it) — Manny Rayner

The ultimate goal of a habit-forming product is to solve the user's pain by creating an association so that the user identifies the company's product or service as the source of relief. — Nir Eyal

While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it. — G.K. Chesterton

Surely if there be any habit which your own hand and eye should help in forming, it is the habit of prayer. — J.C. Ryle

For instance, they [The Federal Narcotics Bureau ] give out that marijuana is a harmful and habit-forming drug, and it simply isn't. They claim that you can get addicted to opiates with one shot, and you can't. They over-estimate the physical bad effects, and so forth. — William S. Burroughs

The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than is the picture. The process in fact is habit-forming — Lucian Freud

The practice is addictive, or, perhaps a better expression is "habit forming". Once you start practicing you will crave it and will practice everywhere you go, in your brother's terrace, an airborne plane (in the kitchen area until the kick you out), behind the airport counter or just all out in full display while waiting for the next plane out of Dubai. — Claudia Azula Altucher

Forming culture is not a one-time event. — Matt Chandler

In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them. — Thomas Merton

Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper. — Robert Benchley

Everything is habit-forming, so make sure what you do is what you want to be doing. — Wilt Chamberlain

Agency, or the power to choose, was ours as spirit children of our Creator before the world was. It is a gift from God, nearly as precious as life itself. Often, however, agency is misunderstood. While we are free to choose, once we have made those choices, we are tied to the consequence of those choices. We are free to take drugs or not. But once we choose to use a habit-forming drug, we are bound to the consequences of that choice. Addiction surrenders later freedom to choose. — Russell M. Nelson

For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading. — Louis Kronenberger

For the record, pot, like the Reader's Digest , is not necessarily habit-forming, but both can lead to hard-core addiction : heroin, in one case, abridged bad books, in the other. Either way you look at it, a withdrawal from a meaningful life. — Mordecai Richler

You won't be liberated from deformation by new information. God doesn't deliver us from the deformative habit-forming power of tactile rival liturgies by merely giving us a book. Instead, — James K.A. Smith

I'm not saying it isn't habit forming, but it's much milder than tobacco, alcohol, or cocaine. Law enforcement says it's addictive, but that's ridiculous. If you believe that, then pachinko is far more dangerous. — Haruki Murakami

Were it not for this [dissatisfaction], the perfect painting might be painted, on the completion of which the painter could retire. It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. The process of creation becomes necessary to the painter perhaps more than it is in the picture. The process is in fact habit-forming. — Lucian Freud

The robots came bearing a gift and the name of it was "Plenty."
Plenty is a habit-forming drug. You do not cut the dosage down. You kick it if you can; you stop the dose entirely. But the convulsions that follow may wreck the body entirely. — Frederik Pohl

Habits grow like dragons if you feed them. — Richelle E. Goodrich

But Father had once told her that the trouble with passing up opportunities was that it was habit-forming. If you told yourself you were waiting for a better opportunity next time, why, next time you'd probably tell yourself the same thing. Father had said that most people spent their whole lives waiting for an opportunity that was good enough, and then they died. Father had said that while seizing opportunities would mean that all sorts of things went wrong, it wasn't nearly as bad as being a hopeless lump. Father had said that after she got into the habit of seizing opportunities, then it was time to start being picky about them. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Love and joy are incredibly habit-forming; often a single exposure is enough to cause permanent addiction. — John Brunner

The classification of facts, the recognition of their sequence and relative significance is the function of science, and the habit of forming a judgment upon these facts unbiased by personal feeling is characteristic of what may be termed the scientific frame of mind. — Karl Pearson

Now there is no other way of forming a habit of operation than by operating. — Mortimer J. Adler

If you are building a habit-forming product, write down the answers to these questions: What habits does your business model require? What problem are users turning to your product to solve? How do users currently solve that problem and why does it need a solution? How frequently do you expect users to engage with your product? What user behavior do you want to make into a habit? — Nir Eyal

The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again. — W. H. Auden

I never understood why people take drugs. They're habit forming and they can kill you. I didn't need anything to pep me up or make me feel more creative, and I didn't need them to help me with women. — Stan Lee

While determination builds character, quitting is habit forming. — Frank Sonnenberg

Instead of relying on expensive marketing, habit-forming companies link their services to the users' daily routines and emotions. — Nir Eyal

No matter what happens - never give up a hole ... In tossing in your cards after a bad beginning you also undermine your whole game, because to quit between tee and green is more habit-forming than drinking a highball before breakfast. — Sam Snead

The Balopticon [a machine that projects photos on canvas to trace the lines] is an evil, inartistic, habit-forming, lazy and vicious machine! It also is a useful, time-saving, practical and helpful one. I use one often-and am thoroughly ashamed of it. I hide it whenever I hear people coming. — Norman Rockwell

It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice. — Mahatma Gandhi

Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered? — Marcel Duchamp

Part of the problem about authenticity is that virtues aren't the only things that are habit forming: the more someone behaves in a way that is damaging to self or to others, the more "natural" it will both seem and actually be. Spontaneity, left to itself, can begin by excusing bad behavior and end by congratulating vice. — N. T. Wright

One of the most popular narcotics to ease the pain of economy is cherishing the belief that better days are ahead. This is both efficacious and commendable, but it sometimes turns out to be a habit-forming drug ... Things to which you look forward too long are almost invariably disappointing when you get them, and you might die first anyway. — Marjorie Hillis

Advice ... is a habit-forming drug. You give a dear friend a bit of advice today, and next week you find yourself advising two or three friends, and the week after, a dozen, and the week following, crowds! — Carolyn Wells

Bookish people drolly claim to be addicted. I think, in some cases, this is literally true ... I suppose this makes me a small-time pusher, holding a couple of capsules of a novel compound, looking for vulnerable readers for whom it might turn out to be habit-forming. There's enough of them. When I walk into a bookshop
one of the big ones, a vast dispensary stacked with complex uppers and downers
I can't help thinking, my God, what army of junkies is all this feeding? — Henrietta Rose-Innes

Cocaine isn't habit forming. I should know, I've been using it for years — Tallulah Bankhead

Books are a habit-forming drug. — Agatha Christie

I don't like drugs. I think cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. It's about the most boring drug ever invented. — Mick Jagger

Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit forming too. A stiffness of the attitude. — Gregory Maguire

The key to becoming a more efficient leader isn't checking off all the items on your to-do list each day. It's in forming the habit of prioritizing your time so that you are accomplishing your most important goals in an efficient manner. — John C. Maxwell

Listen up, then. Evil is a choice. It is a choice. Doing the wicked thing is the easy way out, and it is habit forming. I've done it. — Miles Cameron

Constantly seeking approval means you're perpetually worried that others are forming negative judgments of you. This steals the fun, ingenuity, and spontaneity from your life. Flip the switch on this habit. If you're lucky enough to have something that makes you different from everybody else, don't be ashamed and don't change. Uniqueness is priceless. In this crazy world that's trying to make you like everyone else, find the courage to keep being your remarkable self. It takes a lot of courage to stand alone, but being unapologetically YOU is worth it! — John Geiger

Indecision is debilitating; it feeds upon itself; it is, one might almost say, habit-forming. Not only that, but it is contagious; it transmits itself to others. — Heinz Hopf

There is nothing so habit-forming as money. — Don Marquis

Habit-forming products often start as nice-to-haves, but once the habit is formed, they become must-haves. — Nir Eyal

You could say that Elphaba brought us together,' said Boq softly. 'I'm closer to her and so I'm closer to you.'
Galinda seemed to give up. She leaned her head back on the velvet cushions of the swing and said, 'Boq, you know despite myself I think you're a little sweet. You're a little sweet and you're a little charming and you're a little maddening and you're a little habit-forming.'
Boq held his breath.
But you're little!' she concluded. 'You're a Munchkin, for god's sake!'
He kissed her, he kissed her, he kissed her, little by little by little. — Gregory Maguire

A great strategy for success in life is to become good at something, anything, and let that feeling propel you to new and better victories. Success can be habit-forming. Pick — Scott Adams

We feel led to caution ... against forming the bad habit of incurring debt and taking upon themselves obligations which frequently burden them heavier than they can bear, and lead to the loss of their homes and other possessions. We know it is the fashion of the age to use credit to the utmost limit ... We, therefore, repeat our counsel ... to shun debt. Be content with moderate gains, and be not misled by illusory hopes of acquiring wealth ... Let our children also be taught habits of economy, and not to indulge in tastes which they cannot gratify without running into debt. — Wilford Woodruff

Losing is like smoking. It's habit forming"; "Fear is the basis of all mankind. In cards, you psyche 'em out, you shark 'em, you put the fear of God in 'em — Puggy Pearson