Word: habitant
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...through habit, may forget to think...
Raised in comfortable country-house surroundings, young Stafford was the pet of the family. His religious mother insisted that her children be "unsectarian Christians . . . taking their religious inspiration directly from the spirit of the New Testament." Stafford absorbed her teachings, but quickly developed "a disconcerting habit of giving unsought, and often unwelcome, advice to elder members of the family." Result: his elder brothers dubbed him "Dad," and "the trait which earned the name has been a characteristic of his political life...
Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller, of the British Army, who was this author, does something very few of even the best-posted military observers do: he criticizes before the fact. This habit apparently was responsible for his being retired from the British Army in 1933. He kept saying that the British were being outsmarted by the totalitarian powers, that the R.A.F. was being neglected, that failure to mechanize was suicidal, and that war would soon demonstrate the weaknesses of the popular Liddell Hart defense-is-the-best-defense theory...
...near enough to one to learn how, decided that, come what may, Dorothy must have lessons. Dorothy got them at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, where she studied classical music for four years. The Conservatory's high-brow teachers tried, but they never could break Dorothy of her habit of making horrible faces while she played. Their prim five-finger exercises never could curb her habit of cutting loose in shoulder-shaking, canebrake improvisations (Dorothy finally wore out one piano). The Conservatory was never able to keep her percussive feet still either...
...still the ROTC system continues, intensifies, and plans for the indefinite future. The total effect is one of confusion to the individual and an overall diffusion of energy. There is a fundamental friction between the military habit of mind, and the approach to thought and action which a liberal college education aims to develop. The one is obedience and a stifling of the individual for practical expedience; the other is experiment, trial and error growth, necessarily inefficient in the short run. The student who tries to combine the two in an ever more divergent path finds himself in a continual...