The moral tradition of our lives
Our lives make a moral tradition for our individual selves, as the life of mankind at large makes a moral tradition for the race; and to have once acted nobly seems a reason why we should always be noble. But Tito was feeling the effect of an opposite tradition: he had won no memories of self-conquest and perfect faithfulness from which he could have a sense of falling.
George Eliot, Romola
So true. Every small decision we make and step we take is building for us this "moral tradition" of our lives. You could perhaps also call it simply "character" or "integrity". I like the idea that each moment we act rightly fortifies and enables us for the next one (I don’t know that having once been noble is enough reason to always be noble, but it wouldn’t do any harm to put yourself in a position from which it is harder to fall).
And yes, I am still reading Romola. It goes down in my individual history as the longest it has ever taken me to finish a novel. I laid it aside after Book 2 to attend to books I needed to read for book club and others, so I keep coming back to it in between, very slowly. In it you see the way that one lie, made in a moment of shock, snowballs into an ongoing tale of deceit for one character, with the occasional moment in which he wishes he had never made such a path necessary to himself (not that it is necessary to continue in it, but in order to protect his reputation as he sees it it becomes necessary to him). You also come to see what much greater freedom, and safety, there is, ultimately, in living in honesty and integrity.
(Disclaimer: I also know that the life we live before God - and hopefully others also - is about grace, repentance and forgiveness as we continually sin and mess it up and try again (and how I would like a re-run on some things!), and that in Christ is the power to turn lives right around, and I'm not advocating a kind of Victorian legalistic morality, I just thought this was an interesting observation of how the human psyche tends to work.)