An Indian once brought up a young lion, and finding him weak and harmless, did not attempt to control him. Every day the lion gained in strength and became more unmanageable, until at last, when excited by rage, he fell upon his master and tore him to pieces. So what seemed to be an "innocent" sin has grown until it strangled him who was once its easy master.
Beware of looking at sin, for at each view it is apt to become better looking.
Habit is practically, for a middle-aged person, fate; for is it not practically certain that what I have done for twenty years I shall repeat to-day? What are the chances for a man who has been lazy and indolent all his life starting in to-morrow morning to be industrious; or a spendthrift, frugal; a libertine, virtuous; a profane, foul-mouthed man, clean and chaste?
A Grecian flute-player charged double fees for pupils who had been taught by inferior masters, on the ground that it was much harder to undo than to form habits.
Habit tends to make us permanently what we are for the moment. We cannot possibly hear, see, feel, or experience anything which is not woven in the web of character. What we are this minute and what we do this minute, what we think this minute, will be read in the future character as plainly as words spoken into the phonograph can be reproduced in the future.
"The air itself," says Babbage, "is one vast library on whose pages are written forever all that man has ever said, whispered, or done." Every sin you ever committed becomes your boon companion. It rushes to your lips every time you speak, and drags its hideous form into your imagination every time you think. It throws its shadow across your path whichever way you turn. Like Banquo's ghost, it will not down. You are fastened to it for life, and it will cling to you in the vast forever. Do you think yourself free? You are a slave to every sin you ever committed. They follow your pen and work their own character into every word you write.
Rectitude is only the confirmed habit of doing what is right. Some men cannot tell a lie: the habit of truth telling is fixed, it has become incorporated with their nature. Their characters bear the indelible stamp of veracity. You and I know men whose slightest word is unimpeachable; nothing could shake our confidence in them. There are other men who cannot speak the truth: their habitual insincerity has made a twist in their characters, and this twist appears in their speech.