Habits

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Title:     Habits
Author: Lemuel K. Washburn [More Titles by Washburn]

Habit makes the man, but man makes the habit. It is here where we want to get in a word. A habit seems a little thing in itself, but it is the most terrible tyrant that rules the world. And it does rule it, say what we will. Now, it is essential in this life of ours to start right if we are going to come out right. And the best thing to start with is a good habit. It is just as easy when a young man is forming his habits to form good ones as bad ones. Good habits are not expensive. A virtue does not cost a quarter as much to support as does a vice.

We sometimes wonder how it is that a being with brains, with intelligence, with reason, could ever become a slave to habit. It does not seem possible that a MAN cannot order his conduct. But we must recognize facts. Men are victims of habits. They do not perceive that they are bound until they try to be free, and then the strong power of habit asserts itself. How does this terrible despot conquer the mind, the will, the man? What is this invisible force that drives the strongest and the brightest with a whip of iron? It is only an act repeated again and again, but it has become a second nature, a part of the man, and it has conquered by the power of reinforcement by repetition.

The only way to be superior to bad habits is never to acquire them. Do not do the first bad act. Stop before you begin to go wrong. The time when a man is saved is when he is young. The time to plant or sow is in the Spring. The harvest depends upon the seed. We cannot pick figs from thistles. A bad habit will end in a bad life. Watch the feet of the boy and the man’s will not need watching. We must begin with the young, and see that right habits are acquired in early life.

It is only a foot from a good habit to a bad one, but it is a mile back again. We may lose in an hour all we have made in a year. We can undo in a day what we have done in a lifetime. A habit is a plant of which an act is the seed. It will bear fruit if it be a good act, but ashes if it be a bad act. It is the first step that starts the race. To start right is the best way to go right and to end right. Never let a bad habit fasten to your life.

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It takes the shingles from the widow’s cottage to put paint on the house of God.

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Many persons who claim that they are “clothed with righteousness” do not seem to have got very good fits.

[The end]
Lemuel K. Washburn's essay: Habits

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