Quotes About Self-control

But after this natural burst of indignation, no man of sense, courage, or prudence will waste his time or his strength in retrospective reproaches or repinings.

We become our own enemy when we are thrown out of balance by anger, hatred, grief, or any other intense emotion. We are for the time being obsessed by something alien.

Our greediness so often troubles us, making us run after so many things at the same time, that while we too eagerly look after the least we miss the greatest.

You have to discipline yourself and not carry the character with you. You need to switch it off and take time to re-energize.

All the time you're saying to yourself, 'I could do that, but I won't,'--which is just another way of saying that you can't.

More free time means more time to waste. The worker who used to have only a little time in which to get drunk and beat his wife now has time to get drunk, beat his wife - and watch TV.

What I want to do and what I do are two separate things. If we all went around doing what we wanted all the time, there'd be chaos.

For once I'm not the guy losing my temper all the time.

And I longed to tell Uncle Lawrence, to show him I knew when to keep quiet. But I'd long since found out that too often we can't say the very thing that will redeem us. And if that isn't being grown-up, I don't know what is.

It would never do for me to lose my wits in the presence of a man who had none too many of his own.

I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other.

My nature was not originally calm,' said I. 'I have learned to appear so by dint of hard lessons and many repeated efforts.

we shouldn't always have what we want: it spoils the best of us, doesn't it?

Let your eyes be blind to all external attractions, your ears deaf to all the fascinations of flattery and light discourse.—These are nothing—and worse than nothing—snares and wiles of the tempter, to lure the thoughtless to their own destruction.

without fostering vain regrets and hurtful aspirations, and feeding thoughts that should be sternly and pitilessly left to perish of inanition.

His appetite for the stimulus of wine had increased upon him, as I had too well foreseen. It was now something more to him than an accessory to social enjoyment: it was an important source of enjoyment in itself.

When I tell you not to marry without love, I do not advise you to marry for love alone: there are many, many other things to be considered.  Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them;

he has no more idea of exerting himself to overcome obstacles than he has of restraining his natural appetites; and these two things are the ruin of him.

How can I make it clear to him that what appears easy and attractive will drag him down into the depths, depths where there is no comfort to be found, no friends and no beauty, depths from which it is almost impossible to raise oneself?

It is impossible for me to be all sugar one day and spit venom the next. I'd rather choose the golden mean (which is not so golden), keep my thoughts to myself, and try for once to be just as disdainful to them as they are to me. Oh, if only I could!

Above all, I have to maintain my air of confidence. No one must know that my heart and mind are constantly at war with each other.

I strip the bed as fast as I can so I won't be tempted to get back in. Do you know what Mother calls this sort of thing? The art of living. Isn't that a funny expression?

Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don't drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor's yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper.

In early sobriety I heard that if you have an idea after ten p.m., it is probably not a good idea—and this was before e-mail.