"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock,
by force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.
As Miss Barlow rattled away cheerfully, he crumpled up the copy and tossed it into the waste-paper basket; but not before he had, automatically and
by force of habit, altered the word "God" to the word "circumstances."
Others do not necessarily mean it, but just offer it anyway
by force of habit.
By force of habit, I turned to Rizal, even if I knew he had never visited Russia.
This is the routine cruelty of a security cabal, its humanity withered by years in power: it is genocide
by force of habit. ("Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap," London Review of Books, August 15, 2004)
By force of habit, Al-Basheer starts his day with reading email and organizing his calendar, and feels hapless without his mobile, laptop and iPad, even if he is on a holiday.
But
by force of habit, one might expect the switch to always be on auto and thus not bother to double-check.
And I, like millions of mankind, walk and move, generally
by force of habit, in a long caravan that ascends and descends, encamps, and then proceeds on its way.
"What happened is that,
by force of habit, I drove by the bakery today.
True to type, my offspring frequented food courts and bookshops, were approached by the odd child with palms outstretched - and
by force of habit put in some spare change just to be left alone and forget that such aberrations of society exist.
To learn whether the apes were carrying the tools simply
by force of habit or because they enjoyed doing so, Call and Mulcahy performed another test, in which they repeatedly removed the grapes after a first showing behind the Plexiglas.
Gathering up the radio, his C-9 (and
by force of habit, all the spent brass casings), Yeo started to crawl back to safety.
They ring their mates in the council who in turn badger the cops who,
by force of habit, send in the Land Rovers and scare the bejesus out of everyone.