CHAPTER VII
GOLDEN HABITS
We often hear I think that there is success in all honest endeavor, and that there is some victory gained in every gallant struggle that is made.—Dickens. persons speaking of "the force of habit" as though it were something to be regretted. "Habit is second nature," is a saying that is included among the classic epigrams of men. That habits do become very strong, all the world has learned, sometimes to its sorrow and sometimes to its advantage and delight.
For be it known that good habits are just as strong as bad habits and in that Every noble work is at first impossible.—Carlyle. we should all feel a common joy and a sense of deliverance from wrong doing.
The fact that a fixed habit is only a matter of long and gradual growth ought Truth is a strong thing, let man’s life be true.—Browning. to be very much to our advantage. This very fundamental principle of their construction should result in giving us very many more good habits than bad habits. This happy conclusion is based on the supposition that while many of Efforts to be permanently useful must be uniformly joyous—a spirit all sunshine, graceful from very gladness, beautiful because bright.—Carlyle. us are so constituted that it is possible we might, in some unguarded moment, do a wrong act, it is unlikely we could repeat the error so often and so long as to make the questionable action become a fixed habit.
The doing of a wrong thing should result in convincing us, on sober second Pass no day idly; youth does not return.—Chinese Proverb. thought, that it was a mistake on our part to have permitted ourselves to have been led into uncertain, unhappy paths and we would then and there reinforce our moral strength and our determination that the wrong should not occur again.
In doing right things, the conditions are quite reversed. Every good deed inspires us to still greater determination to do more of the same kind. Wrong If, instead of a gem, or even a flower, we could cast the gift of a lovely thought into the heart of a friend, that would be giving as the angels must give.—George MacDonald. deeds are, in most cases, committed in a moment of thoughtlessness when one’s conscience, one’s higher and better self, is momentarily off guard. Our good acts are performed with a full and proud realization of what we are doing and are followed by a grateful sense of retrospective pleasure, after they have been done.
"Could the young," says Henry Nothing can constitute good breeding that has not good manners for its foundation.—Bulwer Lytton. James, "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. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literateness, wiped out." One of our latter day philosophers tells us that "happiness is a matter of habit; and you had better gather it fresh every day or you will never get it at all."
In speaking of the success he had achieved in life, Charles Dickens said: "I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder The common earth is common only to those who are deaf to the voices and blind to the visions which wait on it and make its flight a music and its path a light.—H. W. Mabie. and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels."
When we come to study carefully the full meaning of the word "habit" we find it to be a very comprehensive term. In the sense in which it is here employed The truest lives are those that are cut rose-diamond-fashion, with many facets answering to the many-planed aspects of the world about them.—Oliver Wendell Holmes. the dictionary defines it as being "a tendency or inclination toward an action or condition, which by repetition has become easy, spontaneous or even unconscious." From this definition it is easy to deduce the conclusion that one’s habits are in fact one’s manners, one’s principles, one’s mode of conduct; and a careful consideration of the theme finally brings one to a clear realization of the secret of