Habit is a second nature which prevents us from knowing the first of which it has neither the cruelties nor the enchantments.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits by which we are nurtured and live.

Virtue is a habit of the mind consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit just as habit is a second nature.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

The moral virtues then are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature indeed prepares in us the ground for their reception but their complete formation is the product of habit.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance nature compulsions habit reason passion desire.

We have been working with Habitat for Humanity and we have built eighty homes 80% of which are being lived in by New Orleans' musicians. It is called the Musicians' Village and at the center is the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music.

The more a race is governed by its passions the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument the more intense will be its love of music.

Quality is not an act it is a habit.