Moral Habits Quotes

Virtue depends partly upon training and partly upon practice; you must learn first, and then strengthen your learning by actions.

Moral habits, induced by public practices, are far quicker in making their way into men's private lives, than the failings and faults of individuals are in infecting the city at large.

The profound influence of religion on American politics is vital, but it is best when indirect: on the morals, habits, and souls of individual Americans; on the political climate and the principals that should guide policy, rather than on specific policies themselves…

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.

We become just by performing just action, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave action.

Doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life. It is worse than useless; it does positive harm. Something of 'the image of Christ' must be seen and observed by others in our private life, and habits, and character, and doings.

The mind of man can never be wholly barren. Through our whole lives we are subject to successive impressions; for, either new ideas are continually flowing in, or traces of the old ones are marked deeper. If, therefore, you be not acquiring good principles be assured that you are acquiring bad ones; if you be not forming virtuous habits you are, how insensibly soever to yourselves, forming vicious ones.

The strength of a man's virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

It is no more effort for a man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of habit.

We must become just be doing just acts.

When, in the present world, men behave well, that is no doubt sometimes because they are creatures of habit as well as, sometimes, because they are reasonable.

The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty; and, by proper representations of the deformity of vice and beauty of virtue, beget correspondent habits, and engage us to avoid the one, and embrace the other.

Vice is man's nature: virtue is a habit--or a mask.

All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.

Since custom is the principal magistrate of man's life, let men by all means endeavor to obtain good customs.

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.

For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

It is easy to perform a good action, but not easy to acquire a settled habit of performing such actions.