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The chains of habit are too weak to be felt
until they are too strong to be broken.
- Samuel Johnson
Related topics: Life Human-Nature Psychology Habit Habits
A wise man will make haste to forgive,
because he knows the true value of time,
and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
- Samuel Johnson
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
- Samuel Johnson
Great works are performed not by strength,
but by perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
- Samuel Johnson
The feeling of friendship is like that
of being comfortably filled with roast beef;
love, like being enlivened with champagne.
- Samuel Johnson
If a man does not make new acquaintances
as he advances through life,
he will soon find himself alone.
A man, sir, should keep his friendships in constant repair.
- Samuel Johnson
Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
Second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.
- Samuel Johnson [also attributed to Oscar Wilde]
For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains,
but to live in a way that respects
and enhances the freedom of others.
- Nelson Mandela
We all go through life bristling
at our external limitations,
but the most difficult chains
to break are inside us.
- Bradley Whitford
It is better to be in chains with friends,
than to be in a garden with strangers.
- Persian Proverb
We are strange beings, we seem
to go free, but we go in chains -
chains of training, custom, convention,
association, environment -
in a word, Circumstance -
and against these bonds
the strongest of us struggle in vain.
- Mark Twain
In the final choice, a soldier's pack
is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Choose your Habits, Choose your Life.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Feeling sorry for yourself, and your present condition,
is not only a waste of energy
but the worst habit you could possibly have.
- Dale Carnegie
Successful people are simply those with successful habits.
- Brian Tracy
If we want to direct our lives,
we must take control of our consistent actions.
It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives,
but what we do consistently.
- Anthony Robbins
The most dangerous phrase in the language is,
"We've always done it this way."
- Grace Hopper
Correcting bad habits cannot be done
by forbidding or punishment.
- Robert Baden-Powell (the founder of scouting)
If you do not change direction,
you may end up where you are heading.
- Lao Tzu
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.
- Will Durant (commonly attributed to Aristotle)
We first make our habits, then our habits make us.
- John Dryden
Who has fully realized that history
is not contained in thick books
but lives in our very blood?
- Carl Jung
Every generation laughs at the old fashions,
but follows religiously the new.
- Henry David Thoreau
We disrespect ourselves and our free-will
whenever we say that we NEED to do something.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What is it about sameness that so draws me,
and how could I begin to have
that same kind of attraction to change?
- Mary Anne Radmacher
We hardly ever realize that we can
cut anything out of our lives,
anytime, in the blink of an eye.
- Carlos Castaneda
Habits age men before their time.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Most of us are prisoners of habit,
and don't even notice that we do the same things,
think the same things, want the same things each day -
mostly without conscious thought.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There is a fine line between
the perseverance of the courageous tortoise
and the habit of the stubborn donkey.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
What you don't do daily, you probably won't do weekly either.
What you make a habit of putting-off
just keeps getting pushed away again and again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth.
- Publius Cornelius Tacitus
Habit is habit,
and not to be flung out of the window by any man,
but coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
- Mark Twain
We are addicted to being the way we are
- don Miguel Ruiz
Habit and routine have an unbelievable power to waste and destroy.
- Henri de Lubac
Whenever you are angry, be assured that
it is not only a present evil,
but that you have increased a habit.
- Epictetus
Ninety-nine percent of the failures
come from people who have the habit of making excuses.
- George Washington Carver
What we call human nature in actuality is human habit.
- Jewel
The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.
- Herbert Kaufman
Love that does not renew itself every day
becomes a habit and in turn a slavery.
- Khalil Gibran
Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing.
You don't win once in a while,
you don't do things right once in a while,
you do them right all the time.
Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing.
- Vince Lombardi
There is a fine line between perseverance and insanity.
At what point have you tried your best,
and it's time to do something different?
It's a balance - a paradox.
If you get in the habit of giving up
as soon as something gets difficult,
your life won't work,
but if you keep tilting at windmills -
madly trying the same thing again and again,
your life also won't work.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
By nature, we are all creatures of habit.
We instinctively adopt familiar routines for most activities.
We eat about the same number of meals each day -
at more or less the same times.
We have a regular pattern of sleeping -
unless it is perturbed by illness or shift work.
Most everything we do is habitual.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt.
Doubt separates people.
It is a poison that disintegrates
friendships and breaks up pleasant relations.
It is a thorn that irritates and hurts;
it is a sword that kills.
- The Buddha
During his training, a baseball player strives
to make each swing better than the last.
The repetition of a faulty swing would be worse than useless.
It would ingrain bad habits.
The same is true of emotional responses.
If we allow ourselves to continue to have the same angry responses,
we just entrench our anger habit.
But if we strive - through consciousness, visualization, and coaching -
to moderate our anger response,
over time, we can train ourselves to respond
to events as we choose - without anger.
You can't magically be free from anger tomorrow,
but you can put yourself on your own training program
that will reduce the frequency and intensity
of your anger response day by day, year by year.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
From the way most people live,
one would never guess that humans are beings of free will.
Repetition can be a choice, but often it isn't.
The athlete or pianist who practices the same routine
day after day, year after year, has their eye on a goal.
The unending repetition is a conscious choice
in the pursuit of a life dream.
But what about the sameness of most lives?
Observe the morning commute, the after-work drink,
the Sunday football game or religious service -
how many of those people are consciously following their dream,
training their mind, body, and spirit through that daily repetition?
And how many are mindlessly slogging through each day
out of habit and boredom?
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Get the habit of analysis -
analysis will in time enable synthesis
to become your habit of mind.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
Procrastination is the bad habit of putting off
until the day after tomorrow what should
have been done the day before yesterday.
- Napoleon Hill
Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible
in bright moments as well as in trouble,
we cannot fully respond to its consolations
because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
- Helen Keller
I like to talk about a thing I call a "practiced pause."
Just a few moments of pausing allows me
to consider a circumstance and take stock
of what the best direction might be.
Reactions tend to rise from habit and unconsidered action.
A Response is considered and thoughtful.
My actions are my own and I am, singularly,
responsible for what I see, say, feel and exert.
- Mary Anne Radmacher
I made no resolutions for the New Year.
The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning
and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.
- Anais Nin
Laugh when you can,
apologize when you should,
and let go of what you can't change.
Life's too short to be anything... but happy.
- Anonymous
You are never too old to set another goal
or to dream a new dream.
- C. S. Lewis
You are Never Too Old to Give or Get Gold Stars.
Show Your Honest Appreciation - Today.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
Life is too important to be taken seriously.
- Oscar Wilde
It's never too late -
never too late to start over,
never too late to be happy.
- Jane Fonda
You cannot do a kindness too soon,
for you never know how soon it will be too late.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Friendship is born at that moment
when one person says to another,
"What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
- C. S. Lewis
Seek always to do some good, somewhere.
Every man has to seek in his own way to realize his true worth.
You must give some time to your fellow man.
For remember, you don't live in a world all your own.
Your brothers are here too.
- Albert Schweitzer
While the laughter of joy is in
full harmony with our deeper life,
the laughter of amusement
should be kept apart from it.
The danger is too great of thus learning
to look at solemn things in a spirit of mockery,
and to seek in them opportunities for exercising wit.
- Lewis Carroll
We should be too big to take offense
and too noble to give it.
- Abraham Lincoln
In the long history of humankind (and animal-kind, too)
those who learned to collaborate and
improvise most effectively have prevailed.
- Charles Darwin
Take time to laugh.
It is the music of the soul.
Take time to think.
It is the source of power.
Take time to play.
It is the source of perpetual youth.
Take time to read.
It is the fountain of wisdom.
Take time to pray.
It is the greatest power on Earth.
Take time to love and be loved.
It is a God-given privilege.
Take time to be friendly.
It is the road to happiness.
Take time to give.
It is too short a day to be selfish.
Take time to work.
It is the price of success.
- Anonymous
We never repent of having eaten too little.
- Thomas Jefferson
Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.
- Epicurus
I am an optimist.
It does not seem too much use being anything else.
- Winston Churchill
Most of us love, to be sure.
Yet far too often our love is passive.
We must be proactive in our love
in order for it to change our lives.
- Marianne Williamson
I used to believe in forever, but forever's too good to be true.
- A. A. Milne (Winnie-The-Pooh)
Do not be too moral.
You may cheat yourself out of much life.
So aim above morality.
Be not simply good;
be good for something.
- Henry David Thoreau
Our loved ones -
whether by blood, by marriage, or by choice -
are delicate treasures.
If we hold them too close, they break -
as a butterfly would.
By honoring and enjoying
the freedom of our loved ones,
we gain our own freedom.
Have the courage to trust that
the beautiful butterflies of your life
will return - or not - as life intends.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
It's never too late.
- Anonymous
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- Jonathan Lockwood Huie
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