Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 November 1917 — EASY TO ACQUIRE HABITS [ARTICLE]

EASY TO ACQUIRE HABITS

Imperative Reason Why Every Person Should Strive to Make Them Good, Not Bad Ones. A Philadelphia embezzler says that he can remember the time in his life when the owing of $3 worried him. But owing money may, like many other things, become a habit and scar the conscience. He acquired the habit and in late years felt no uneasiness in borrowing all the money he could get his hands on, even without waiting for the owner’s consent. “How use doth breed a habit in a man!” Habit lies at the basis of all our ordinary action. Everything that we do repeatedly becomes easy and habltuaL David Hume declared that the habit of seeing the bright side of things is worth more than a thousand pounds a year. Dilligence, economy and perseverance are habits that carry life as steadily to success as favoring winds carry a ship at sea. Depravity is not an inheritance, but a character formed by persistent habits. And rectitude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. The truth is not simply that we may form habits; we must form habits. We cannot do or say or think or feel anything without leaving a definite mark on the nervous organism which more or less affects all succeeding action or speech or thought or feeling. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits, they would take care to have those habits helpful instead of harmful.