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

The line uses a comic domestic image to argue that entrenched behaviors rarely disappear through sheer willpower or sudden resolutions. “Tossed out the window” suggests dramatic, instantaneous change; “coaxed down the stairs” implies patient, incremental effort and repeated persuasion of the self. The metaphor also hints that habits have a stubborn, almost animate resistance, requiring strategy rather than force. Read this way, the quote is less about moral weakness than about human psychology: lasting change tends to be gradual, built through small substitutions and consistent practice. Its enduring appeal comes from translating a difficult truth about self-reform into a vivid, memorable scene.