For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In a sense, habits never really disappear. Once formed, they always remain in our neurology.
So much of what we do every single day is the result of habits that we have formed over time.
Habits are malleable throughout your entire life.
I've been deeply influenced by Aristotle's idea that virtue is a habit, something you practice and get better at, rather than something that comes naturally. 'The control of the appetites by right reason,' is how he defined it.
We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.
All my habits through life have been singularly removed from any condition of reliance on others, and the feeling - right or wrong - that aloneness is my proper position has prevailed since my early childhood, no doubt nourished and strengthened by many and quick-following bereavements.
Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.
It seems difficult, sometimes, to believe that there was a time when sentiments now become habitual, sentiments that imply not only the original imperative of conduct, but the original metaphysic of living, were by no means altogether habitual.
For all my friends in the media who like quotes, mark this quote down. From this day on I'd like to be known as 'The Big Aristotle' because Aristotle once said, 'Excellence is not a singular act; it's a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.'
No opposing quotes found.