Learning new things takes time, practice, and a good amount of repetition. But once they become a routine, you will almost certainly achieve the goals you set for developing the new habit.
With this in mind, here are 35 quotes to motivate you to stick with the good habit you want to develop.
What are habits
Habits are the result of repeating actions numerous times until they become automatic. Routinary.
Examples of habits are waking up at 6 in the morning. Drinking coffee, eating breakfast while browsing your social media accounts.
When a habit is ingrained, it will allow the brain to divert attention to other things that require your attention. Making things automatic is the brain’s way of conserving energy for difficult tasks.
Why do we need to develop good habits?
For the simple reason, that good habits will improve our quality of life. And who wouldn’t want that?
But to be more specific, some of the main reasons for developing good habits include the following:
- Your habits form your essence. Because these are daily routines, they will eventually define you as a person.
- Good habits improve your overall physical and mental health.
- Good habits are more effective than self-motivation. Because they are already set, there is no need for an extra effort to motivate yourself.
How do you develop a good habit?
James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, discusses how to develop a good habit in great detail. But to summarize the process of developing a good habit, it involves the 3 Rs.
These 3 Rs are the following:
- Reminder- or the trigger of the action or habit that you want to develop. For example, if you want to get fitter, the habit you want to develop is to exercise each morning. A good reminder for the habit maybe the smell of coffee. Or the sight of your exercise mat when you wake up.
- Routine- or the habit itself. You perform the action each time you get reminded of it. So in the example, when you smell the aroma of the coffee, you are going to perform a set of exercises. Or when you see your mat upon waking up, you will do some yoga exercises.
- Reward- or the benefit that you get when you perform the routine. In our example, that would be a fitter and healthier body.
35 Inspirational quotes about habits
Having said that, here are some quotes to encourage you to stick with the habit you want to develop.
Thoughts, character, and habits quotes
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
― Lao Tzu
“Sow a thought, and you reap an act;
― Samuel Smiles
Sow an act, and you reap a habit;
Sow a habit, and you reap a character;
Sow a character, and you reap a destiny.”
“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state.
― William James
“95% of everything you do is the result of habit.”
― Aristotle
“Moral excellence comes about as a result of habit. We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.”
― Aristotle
“Quality is not an act; it is a habit.”
― Aristotle
Habits change into character. ― Ovid
“And as to being quick, why, bless you! That is only a matter of habit; if you get into the habit of being quick, it is just as easy as being slow; easier, I should say; in fact, it don’t agree with my health to be hulking about over a job twice as long as it need take.
― Anna Sewell
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”
― William James
“Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.”
― Elbert Hubbard
Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first, of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.
― Marcel Proust
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
― Aristotle
Strength of habits quotes
“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”
― Samuel Johnson
“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.”
― Horace Mann
“‘Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.”
― Benjamin Franklin
“Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.”
― Fulke Greville
“Habit: The great economizer of energy.”
― Elbert Hubbard
Habits, soft and pliant at first, are like some coral stones, which are easily cut when first quarried, but soon become hard as adamant.
― Charles Spurgeon
“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.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell
“Habit is the most imperious of all masters.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Habit is thus the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.”
― William James
“Habit is the beneficent harness of routine which enables silly men to live respectfully and unhappy men to live calmly.”
― George Eliot
“Habits are like the wrinkles on a man’s brow; if you will smooth out the one, I will smooth out the other.”
― Josh Billings
Habit formation quotes
“A nail is driven out by another nail; habit is overcome by habit.”
― Erasmus
“Habit! that skilful but slow-moving arranger who begins by letting our minds suffer for weeks on end in temporary quarters, but whom our minds are none the less only too happy to discover at last, for without it, reduced to their own devices, they would be powerless to make any room seem habitable.”
― Marcel Proust
“A habit cannot be tossed out the window; it must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time.”
― Mark Twain
“Drop by drop is the water pot filled.”
― Buddha
“Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”
― Aristotle
“The fixity of a habit is generally in direct proportion to its absurdity.”
― Marcel Proust
“To make anything a habit, do it; to not make it a habit, do not do it; to unmake a habit, do something else in place of it.”
― Epictetus
“Do something everyday that you don’t want to do; this is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.”
― Mark Twain
“The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.”
― Horace Bushnell
“Habit is a man’s sole comfort. We dislike doing without even unpleasant things to which we have become accustomed.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Closing
So, what do you think about these inspirational quotes about good habits? It is undeniably true that developing a good habit is never easy. But it is possible.
With repetition, consistency, and a little motivation from quotes, you can persevere in your journey to a good habit.
If you enjoyed these quotes about good habits, you may also like my monthly selection of inspirational quotes for January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, and December.
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