A habit cannot be tossed out of the window, it must be coaxed down the stairs one step at a time.

-Twain, Mark pseudonym of  Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Attributed.

See, a good habit makes a child a man, Whereas a bad one makes a man a beast.

-Webster,John
  TheWhite Devil, act 2, sc.1.

Women know the damnation of charity because the habit of civilisation has always been to throw them cheap alms rather than give them good wages.

-West, Dame Rebecca formerly  Cecily Isabel Fairfield
  'The Personal ServiceAssociation:Work for Idle Hands to Do', in The Clarion,13 Dec.

   I shook the habit off Entirely and for ever, and again In Nature's presence stood, as now I stand, A sensitive being, a creative soul.

-Wordsworth,William
^1805  The Prelude, bk.12, l.204^7 (published1850).