"Every habit and faculty is formed or strengthened by the corresponding act – walking makes you
walk better, running makes you a better runner. If you want to be literate, read, if you want to be a
painter, paint. Go a month without reading, occupied with something else, and you'll see what the
result is. And if you're laid up a mere ten days, when you get up and try to walk any distance, you'll
find your legs barely able to support you. So if you like doing something, do it regularly; if you
don't like doing something, make a habit of doing something different. The same goes for the
affairs of the mind... So if you don't want to be hot-tempered, don't feed your temper, or multiply
incidents of anger. Suppress the first impulse to be angry, then begin to count the days on which
you don't get angry. 'I used to be angry every day, then only every other day, then every third...' If
you resist it a whole month, offer God a sacrifice, because the vice begins to weaken from day one,
until it is wiped out altogether. 'I didn't lose my temper this day, or the next, and not for two, then
three months in succession.' If you can say that, you are now in excellent health, believe me."
~ Epictetus, Discourses, 2.18
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