> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://hyperallergic.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Weekend Words: Habit
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-habit/
- Published: 2014-11-02T14:33:11.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:32:32.000Z
- Description: Picasso is suddenly everywhere — at the Cubism exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, in gallery shows of his photography and his portraits of Jacqueline Roque, and at the long-delayed reopening of his museum in Paris.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:03 (2014, 2015, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2014/10/habit.jpg)

Giacomo Ceruti, “Portrait of a Smoking Man in Oriental Habit” (c. 1740), oil on canvas, 72 x 56 cm. Private collection. (image via Web Gallery of Art)

Picasso is suddenly everywhere — at the [Cubism exhibition](http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2014/cubism-leonard-a-lauder-collection?ref=hyperallergic.com) at the Metropolitan Museum, in gallery shows of his [photography ](http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/picasso--the-camera--october-28-2014?ref=hyperallergic.com)and his [portraits of Jacqueline Roque](http://www.pacegallery.com/newyork/exhibitions/12690/picasso-jacqueline-the-evolution-of-style?ref=hyperallergic.com), and at the long-delayed reopening of his [museum ](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/28/arts/design/the-picasso-museum-reopens-in-paris.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)in Paris:

> “I paint the way someone bites his fingernails; for me, painting is a bad habit because I don’t know nor can I do anything else.”  
>  
> **—Pablo Picasso**

> “All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.“  
>  
> **—Aristotle**

> “A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.”  
>  
> **—Desiderius Erasmus**

> “Not choice  
> But habit rules the unreflecting herd.”  
>  
> **—William Wordsworth, “Grant that by their unsparing hurricane”**

> “We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.”  
>  
> **—Albert Camus**

> “If you create an act, you create a habit. If you create a habit, you create a character. If you create a character, you create a destiny.”  
>  
> **—Andre Maurois**

> “After I hit a home run I had a habit of running the bases with my head down. I figured the pitcher already felt bad enough without me showing him up rounding the bases.”  
>  
> **—Mickey Mantle**

> “It is a very inconvenient habit of kittens (Alice had once made the remark) that whatever you say to them, they always purr.”  
>  
> **—Lewis Carroll**

> “The air is full of our cries. But habit is the great deadener.”  
>  
> **—Samuel Beckett, *Waiting for Godot***