Beware of "small sins" and "white lies."

A man of experience says: "There are four good habits,--punctuality,
accuracy, steadiness, and dispatch. Without the first, time is wasted;
without the second, mistakes the most hurtful to our own credit and
interest, and those of others, may be committed; without the third,
nothing can be well done; and without the fourth, opportunities of
great advantage are lost, which it is impossible to recall."

Abraham Lincoln gained his clear precision of statement of propositions
by practise, and Wendell Phillips his wonderful English diction by
always thinking and conversing in excellent style.

"Family customs exercise a vast influence over the world. Children go
forth from the parent-nest, spreading the habits they have imbibed over
every phase of society. These can easily be traced to their sources."

"To be sure, this is only a trifle in itself; but, then, the manner in
which I do every trifling thing is of very great consequence, because
it is just in these little things that I am forming my business habits.
I must see to it that I do not fail here, even if this is only a small
task."

"A physical habit is like a tree grown crooked. You can not go to the
orchard, and take hold of a tree grown thus, and straighten it, and
say, 'Now keep straight!' and have it obey you. What can you do? You
can drive down a stake, and bind the tree to it, bending it back a
little, and scarifying the bark on one side. And if, after that, you
bend it back a little more every month, keeping it taut through the
season, and from season to season, at length you will succeed in making
it permanently straight. You can straighten it, but you can not do it
immediately; you must take one or two years for it."

Sir George Staunton visited a man in India who had committed murder;
and in order not only to save his life, but what was of much greater
consequence to him, his caste, he had submitted to a terrible
penalty,--to sleep for seven years on a bed, the entire top of which
was studded with iron points, as sharp as they could be without
penetrating the flesh. Sir George saw him during the fifth year of his
sentence. His skin then was like the hide of a rhinoceros; and he
could sleep comfortably on his bed of thorns, and he said that at the
end of the seven years he thought he should use the same bed from
choice. What a vivid parable of a sinful life! Sin, at first a bed of
thorns, after a tim