Habit

Works to read

• Meno by Plato, c. 385 BCE · Great Books
• The Discourses by Epictetus, c. 108 · Great Books
• Critique of Practical Reason by Immanuel Kant, 1788 · Great Books
• Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, 1861 · Great Books
• Characters by Theophrastus, c. 319 BCE
• Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, c. 63–65 CE
• Two Lives of Charlemagne by Einhard and Notker the Stammerer, c. 830 / c. 885
• St. Dymphna and the Geel Colony by Pierre of Cambrai; Geel tradition, c. 1247; Geel colony tradition from the Middle Ages
• A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume, 1739-1740
• The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, 1742
• Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania by John Dickinson, 1767-1768

Passages

• If then you wish not to be of an angry temper, do not feed the habit

  — Epictetus, The Discourses

• Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent

  — William James, The Principles of Psychology

• for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users

  — Plato, Cratylus

• Will is the child of desire, and passes out of the dominion of its parent only to come under that of habit

  — John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

• Habit was given us in distress By Heaven in lieu of happiness.

  — Alexander Pushkin, Eugene Onegin

• The habit of failure is purely mental and is the mother of fear.

  — Henry Ford, My Life and Work

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: habit, habits, practice. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.