Habits

Dear Friends and Family:

            This is a follow-up note and sermon on Sister Taylor’s latest Manila Message on the subject of “spiders!”  Please refer to attached sermonette! 

President GT

Habits

“The formation of bad habits has often been likened to the weaving of a spider’s web.  Like a spider’s web, which is composed of many strands, a habit is formed with many acts, which are small and harmless by themselves.  They, like the parts of a spider’s web, are often, in the beginning, hidden from view.  But how strong is such a web?  Scientists have calculated that if a rope of spider’s silk were made one inch thick, it would hold up to seventy-four tons.  This rope would be approximately three times as strong as a one inch rope made of iron!  How strong is a single act that goes to make up a habit?  How strong is the habit after it is fully formed?” 

--Story Gems, Albert L. Zobell, Jr. p. 73.

 

“I am your constant companion.  I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. 

I will push you onward or drag you down to failure.  I am completely at your command. 

Half the things you do you might just as well turn over to me and I will be able to do them quickly and correctly. 

I am easily managed—you must merely be firm with me.  Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons I will do it automatically. 

I am the servant of all great men:  and alas, of all failures as well. 

Those who are great, I have made great.  Those who are failures, I have made failures. 

I am not a machine, though I work with all the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a man. 

You may run me for profit or run me for ruin—it makes no difference to me. 

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet.  Be easy with me and I will destroy you.

 WHO AM I?  I AM HABIT!”                      --Author Unknown

“Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you.”  --Elbert Hubbard

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.”  --John Dryden

“As a man spends his hours and his days and his weeks in an air-castle, he finds that the delicate strands and lines of the phantom structure gradually become less and less airy; they begin to grow firm and firmer, strengthening with the years, until at last solid walls hem him in.  Then he is startled by the awful realization that habit and habitancy have transformed his air-castle into a prison from which escape is difficult.” 

--William George Jordan

“The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse that the Hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.  Could the young 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.  We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone.  Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.  The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself every fresh dereliction by saying, ‘I won’t count this time.’  Well! He may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted nonetheless.  Down deep among his nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes.” 

--William James,  The Principles of Psychology

“A man may receive the priesthood and all its privileges and blessings, but until he learns to overcome the flesh, his temper, his tongue, his disposition to indulge in the things God has forbidden, he cannot come into the celestial kingdom of God—he must overcome either in this life or in the life to come.  But this life is the time in which men are to repent.  Do not let any of us imagine that we can go down to the grave not having overcome the corruptions of the flesh and then lose in the grave all our sins and evil tendencies.  They will be with us.  They will be with the spirit when separated from the body.

“It is my judgment that any man or woman can do more to conform to the laws of God in one year in this life than they could in ten years when they are dead.  The spirit only can repent and change, and then the battle has to go forward with the flesh afterwards.  It is much easier to change by overcoming and serving the Lord when both flesh and spirit are combined as one.  This is the time when men are more pliable, it is much easier to change than when it gets hard and sets. 

This life is the time to repent.  That is why I presume it will take a thousand years after the first resurrection until the last group will be prepared to come forth.  It will take them a thousand years to do what it would have taken, but three score years and ten to accomplish in this life.” 

--Melvin J. Ballard, Sermons and Missionary Services of Melvin J. Ballard, by Bryant S. Hinckley, pp. 240-241. 

The old toad said to the young frog as they began their days’ journey on the mud encrusted dirt road to the distant swamp: “pick you rut well, ‘cause you’ll be in it for the next ten miles.” 

I need to remember that I am laying down each second, each minute, hour, day, month and year what I am to become.  The Lord says that I will be held accountable for every thought and word I fashion for myself in the flesh.  (Mosiah 4:30, Alma 12:14, Proverbs 18:21, Matthew 12:36, James 3:6) “The day of this life is the day for [me] to perform [my] labors. –Alma 34:30-35.

            --GTT  06-23-12