Quotes About Willpower

If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire we might nearly be free

Mi resolución es tan firme como el destino

I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey.

Success shall crown my endeavors. Wherefore not? Thus far I have gone, tracing a secure way over the pathless seas, the very stars themselves being witnesses and testimonies of my triumph. Why not still proceed over the untamed yet obedient element? What can stop the determined heart and resolved will of man?

Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock.

It was not in her nature to stop short at half-measures, not to pause when once she had fixed her purpose. If she ever trembled on looking forward to the utter ruin she was about to encounter, her second emotion was to despise herself for such pusillanimity, and to be roused to renewed energy.

It is for you to choose. Choice is man's right, and for that I leave you free.

He appeared to despise himself for being the slave of passion.

Oh! Be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your purposes and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your hearts may be; it is mutable and cannot withstand you if you say that it shall not. Do

Got to keep thatin mind. I'm a ninja now... I swore I'd never freeze up or run away again... AND I WON'T...!

That's how I survived. Time and time again. That's my secret. I survived because I willed it to be. ... How did I survive apocalyptic fire? I simply refused to feel the flames.

If you give your body a choice, it will always take the easy way out. Your body lies. It tells you it cannot when it can.

I'm not an alcoholic—I don't have the discipline to become one—but

Self-actualization, for a man, is self-mastery, the strength to govern his appetites and passions and not be governed by them.

This wasn't a position she wanted to be in. And yet . . . yet she knew that she was going to do it anyway.

Stevie was not one of those people who thought fate decided for her. Fate was making choices. Fate was at least trying.

My dear fellow, who will let you?" "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

Do you mean to tell me that you're thinking seriously of building that way, when and if you are an architect?" "Yes." "My dear fellow, who will let you?" "That's not the point. The point is, who will stop me?

No matter how hard a struggle he had lived through in the past, he had never reached the ultimate ugliness of abandoning the will to act. In moments of suffering, he had never let pain win its one permanent victory: he had never allowed it to make him lose the desire for joy. He had never doubted the nature of the world or man's greatness as its motive power and its core.

He had to stand on guard against his own feeling—as if some part of him had become a stranger that had to be kept numb, and his will had to be its constant, watchful anesthetic.

A man who surrenders his value is at mercy of anyone's will.

Don't you want to live?" "Passionately." He saw the snap of a spark in Mr. Thompson's eyes and smiled. "I'll tell you more, I know that I want to live much more intensely than you do. I know that that's what you're counting on. I know that you, in fact, do not want to live at all. I want it, and because I want it so much, I will accept no substitute.

He tried to avoid these thoughts. He had to stand on guard against his own feeling—as if some part of him had become a stranger that had to be kept numb, and his will had to be its constant, watchful anesthetic. That part was an unknown of which he knew only that he must never see its root and never give it voice. He had lived through one dangerous moment which he could not allow to return.

He would think of it later, he thought; one moves step by step and one must keep moving. For the moment, with an unnatural clarity, with a brutal simplification that made it almost easy, his consciousness contained nothing but one thought: It must not stop me. The sentence hung alone, with no past and no future. He did not think of what it was that must not stop him, or why this sentence was such a crucial absolute. It held him and he obeyed. He went step by step.