Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Change is strong, but habit is strong too; and you cannot change the old for new, like a garment.

We are, all of us, creatures of habit, and when the seeeming necessity for schooling ourselves in new ways ceases to exist, we fall naturally and easily into the manner and customs which long usage has implanted ineradicably within us.

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

Habits in writing as in life are only useful if they are broken as soon as they cease to be advantageous.

If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten.

New roads; new ruts.

Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

Time only and long experience can bring remedies to defects in the customs of a state whose form is already determined.

Novelty even is useful if a general opinion prevails that the old way is bad.

The old order changeth, yielding place to new; And God fulfils himself in many ways, Lest one good custom should corrupt the world..

No degree of antiquity can give sanction to a usage bad in itself.

By changing the way you do routine things you allow a new man to grow inside you.

Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things.

If you don't change what you are doing today, all of your tomorrows will look like yesterday.

While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.

Change is upsetting. Repetition is tedious. Three cheers for variation!

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual.

Times change: it was once the custom to take a bath weekly and religion daily.

Some rules are nothing but old habits that people are afraid to change.

I worry that even those who want to reform are not quite sure how to go about it. There is so much to be done.

Change is inevitable, change for the better is a full-time job.

Anything is better than stagnation.

There is no new world that you make without the old world.

To rid yourself of old patterns, focus all your energy not on struggling with the old, but on building the new.