Habit
idea · 3 works · 3 mentions · 4 anchored passages
custom · habit · ethos · habituation · practice
in the texts
Nicomachean Ethics
Repeated practice or custom (ethos) that produces and shapes moral dispositions.
The virtues therefore are engendered in us neither by nature nor yet in violation of nature;
The virtues on the other hand we acquire by first having actually practised them, just as we do the arts.
It is therefore not of small moment whether we are trained from childhood in one set of habits or another;
Tusculan Disputations
The force of repeated practice and training that enables endurance of pain, illustrated by Spartan boys, athletes, hunters, and gladiators.
Shall custom avail, and reason not avail?
So much do practice, training, and habit avail.
— But thus far I am speaking of the habit of practice, not yet of reason and wisdom.
On Tranquillity of Mind
The force of long familiarity and repetition, shown both as dangerous in fixing bad tendencies and beneficial in softening hardship.
Reflect that men in fetters at first bear ill the burdens and the shackles on their legs;
But my fear is that habit, which lends things their constancy, may fix this fault in me the more deeply.
that, knowing into what hardships we are born, she devised habit as the softener of calamities, quickly bringing the gravest of them into familiarity.