HABITS
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain
The best way to break a habit is to drop it.
—Teen Esteem
The best way to stop a bad habit is never to begin it.
—J. C. Penney
The Five “Watches”
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
—Frank Outlaw
Bad habits are like comfortable beds—easy to get into but hard to get out of.
—Watson C. Black
A bad habit never disappears miraculously, it’s an undo-it-yourself project.
—Abigail Van Buren
Habits are first cobwebs, then cables.
—Spanish proverb
An old teacher was once taking a walk through a forest with a pupil by his side. The old man suddenly stopped and pointed to four plants close at hand. The first was just beginning to peep above the ground, the second had rooted itself pretty well into the earth, the third was a small shrub, while the fourth was a full-sized tree. The tutor said to his young companion:
“Pull up the first.”
The boy easily pulled it up with his fingers.
“Now pull up the second.”
The youth obeyed, but found the task not so easy.
“And now the third.”
The boy had to put forth all his strength and was obligated to use both arms to uproot it.
“And now,” said the master, “try your hand on the fourth.”
But, the trunk of the tall tree, grasped in the arms of the youth, hardly shook its leaves.
“This, my son, is just what happens with our bad habits. When they are young, we can cast them out more readily with the help of God; but when they are old, it is hard to uproot them, though we pray and struggle ever so sincerely.”
—Heidelberg Herald
Habits are too light to be noticed till they are too heavy to be broken.
—Samuel Johnson
Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
—Augustine
HALLOWEEN
At Halloween there was a knock on my door and it was someone from Congress saying, “Trick or treat!”
I said, “What’s the treat?’
He said, “Tax reform.”
I said, “What’s the trick?”
He said, “I just told you.”
—Bob Orben
HANDICAPS
John Milton, blinded in 1652, wrote his masterpiece Paradise Lost after the loss of his eyesight forced him into retirement. Isaac Watts was handicapped with a severe physical deformity, yet he became a preacher and the father of English hymnody. Though weak and sickly, he wrote six hundred sacred songs, several books of poetry, and many influential doctrinal discourses. Fanny Crosby, accidentally blinded at six weeks of age, triumphed over her handicap and gave us more than eight thousand hymns.
—Our Daily Bread
HAPPINESS
Hagor shouted to someone on a mountain, “What is the secret to happiness?” The answer came back, “Celibacy, Abstinence, Fasting, Poverty.” Hagor didn’t like that answer, so he shouted, “Is there anyone else up there I can talk to?”
The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
—Joseph Addison
Act as if you were already happy and that will tend to make you happy.
—Dale Carnegie
The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.
Very little is needed to make life happy. It is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
—Marcus Aurelius
To be happy, don’t do whatever you like, but like whatever you do.
What is the secret of happiness? One businessman put it very simply:
“The important thing is to be content with one’s lot—provided it’s a whole lot.”
—Murray Watts
Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.
A patient complaining of melancholy consulted Dr. John Abernathy, British physician (1764–1831). After an examination the doctor pronounced, “You need amusement. Go and hear the comedian Grimaldi; he will make you laugh and that will be better for you than any drugs.” Said the patient, “I am Grimaldi.”
—The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes
The Chinese character for “happiness” is a combination of three elements: the characters for a person, a productive field, and clothes.
Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.
—Abraham Lincoln
Feet are measured by inches
Roads are measured by miles
But the happiness that we gain in life
Is measured only by smiles.
Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.
Real happiness is more of a habit than a goal, more of an attitude than an attainment. It is the companion of cheerfulness, not the creature of circumstances. Happiness is what overtakes us when we forget ourselves, when we learn to open our eyes in optimism and close the door in the face of defeat. We win happiness when we lose ourselves in service to others.
—William Arthur Ward
A happy person is not a person in a certain set of circumstances, but rather a person with a certain set of attitudes.
—Hugh Downs
We have no right to happiness; only an obligation to do our duty.
—C. S. Lewis
It’s not how much we have but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.
—Charles H. Spurgeon
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
—Bertrand Russell
In his book, Happiness Through Creative Living, Preston Bradley recalled the results of a poll which had been taken among experienced Armed Services personnel. This older group, though still youthful, replied to the question: “What things do you wish you had known before you were twenty-one?” The ten most common responses were:
1. How I was going to make a living.
2. That my health after thirty depended to some extent on what I put in my stomach before I was twenty-one.
3. How to take care of money.
4. Habits are hard to change after twenty-one.
5. The commercial asset of being neatly and sensibly dressed.
6. That worthwhile things require time, patience, and work.
7. That the world gave me about what I deserved.
8. That a thorough education not only pays better wages than hard labor but it brings the best of everything else.
9. The value of absolute truthfulness in everything.
10. That my parents weren’t old fogies after all.
Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and softly sits on your shoulder.
—Bits & Pieces
The happy man is he who is cheerful with moderate means; the unhappy he who is discontented in the midst of plenty.
—Democritus
A man, although extremely wealthy, was very depressed. He offered a large sum of money to anyone who would make him happy. It wasn’t long until a philosopher brought him a new game he had invented. At first it was intriguing, but after a few days the rich man grew weary of playing it. Soon another philosopher was called in. He had a different plan. He put him to work sawing boards, planing them, and making all sorts of interesting things. This lifted his spirits for a while, for labor is a great lightener of the heart. but the day came when he could think of nothing more to build. So his gloom returned. Finally, a third philosopher came and advised him to begin doing things for other people. And that rich man has been happy ever since.
An English newspaper asked its readers this question: “Who are the happiest people on earth?” These were the four prize-winning answers:
A craftsman or artist whistling over a job well done.
A little child building sand castles.
A mother, after a busy day, bathing her baby.
A doctor who has finished a difficult and dangerous operation and saved a human life.
Make one person happy each day and in forty years you have made 14,600 human beings happy for a little time at least.
He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.
—Johann von Goethe
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
—Victor Hugo
Happiness is not a matter of good fortune or worldly possessions. It’s a mental attitude. It comes from appreciating what we have, instead of being miserable about what we don’t have. It’s so simple—yet so hard for the human mind to comprehend.
No matter what your situation, things could be worse. Count your blessings and enjoy a little happiness while you may.
—John Luther
Not in unbelief—Voltaire was an infidel of the most pronounced type. He wrote, “I wish I had never been born.”
Not in pleasure—Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure, if any one did. He wrote, “The worm, the canker, and the grief are mind alone.”
Not in money—Jay Gould, the American millionaire, had plenty of that. When dying he said, “I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth.”
Not in position and fame—Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed more than his share of both. He wrote, “Youth is a mistake, manhood a struggle, old age a regret.”
Not in military glory—Alexander the Great conquered the known world in his day. Having done so, he wept in his tent, because, he said, “There are no more worlds to conquer.”
Happiness is good health and a bad memory.
—Ingrid Bergman
Success is often judged by whether you get what you want. Happiness is different. That depends on wanting what you get.
The following “daily dozen” were the personal creed of Robert Louis Stevenson:
1. Make up your mind to be happy. Learn to find pleasure in simple things.
2. Make the best of your circumstances. No one has everything, and everyone has something of sorrow intermingled with the gladness of life. The trick is to make the laughter outweigh the tears.
3. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Don’t think that somehow you should be protected from misfortunes that befall others.
4. You can’t please everybody. Don’t let criticism worry you.
5. Don’t let your neighbor set your standards. Be yourself.
6. Do the things you enjoy doing, but stay out of debt.
7. Don’t borrow trouble. Imaginary burdens are harder to bear than the actual ones.
8. Since hate poisons the soul, do not cherish enmities or grudges. Avoid people who make you unhappy.
9. Have many interests. If you can’t travel, read about new places.
10. Don’t hold postmortems. Don’t spend your life brooding over sorrows and mistakes. Don’t be one who never gets over things.
11. Do what you can for those less fortunate than yourself.
12. Keep busy at something. A busy person never has time to be unhappy.
In his novel Rasselas, Samuel Johnson said happiness is difficult to find. Rasselas, the imaginary son of the emperor of Abyssinia, was imprisoned, until the time should come for him to ascend the throne, in a remote valley entirely cut off from communication with the rest of the world.
Everything he could possibly desire was provided for him there, and yet life seemed to him an intolerable burden. He could not endure his silken captivity. And so he escaped and traveled from country to country looking for the secret of abiding contentment. And all the time he kept repeating in tones that grew more and more despondent, “Surely happiness is somewhere to be found.” But Rasselas failed to find it.
Happiness comes not from having much to live on but having much to live for.
—William Arthur Ward
HARMONY
Lady Astor and Churchill didn’t get along. Lady Astor said to Churchill, “If you were my husband, I’d put arsenic in your tea.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
HASTE
A friend of mine, a distinguished explorer who spend a couple of years among the savages of the upper Amazon, once attempted a forded march through the jungle. The party made extraordinary speed for the first two days, but on the third morning, when it was time to start, my friend found all the natives sitting on their haunches, looking very solemn and making no preparation to leave.
“They are waiting,” the chief explained to my friend. “They cannot move farther until their souls have caught up with their bodies.”
—James Truslow Adams
Finding Phillips Brooks, the noted New England pastor, irritably pacing his study, a friend asked him, “What is the trouble?”
“The trouble is,” answered Brooks, “that I’m in a hurry—but God isn’t.”
Slow me down, Lord. I’m going too fast,
I can’t see my brother when he’s walking past.
I miss a lot of good things day by day,
I don’t know a blessing when it comes my way.
HATRED
Love blinds us to faults, hatred to virtues.
—Moses Ibn Ezra
English essayist and critic Charles Lamb (1775–1834) once commented about a person he did not want to meet:
“Don’t introduce me to that man. I want to go on hating him, and I can’t hate someone I know.”
—Our Daily Bread
London held its breath in June 1987. While working on a building site, a construction foreman thought his workers had hit a cast iron pipe while using a pile driver. After picking up and then dropping the huge object, they realized the pipe strangely resembled a bomb.
It was—a 2,200 pound World War II bomb, one of the largest the Germans dropped during the blitz which killed more than fifteen thousand Londoners. After evacuating the area, a ten-man bomb disposal unit worked eighteen hours before finally deactivating the seven-foot device.
Hatred is like an unexploded bomb. Unless it’s deactivated it can detonate and cause great damage.
If you want to be miserable, hate somebody.
HEALTH
To insure good health eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness, and maintain an interest in life.
—William Louden
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
—William Temple
The claims that oats bring vibrant health
Have me puzzled plenty,
For horses eat them all their lives
And they are old at twenty.
—C. R. Reagan
HEART
When God measures a man, He put a tape around his heart not his head.