Quotes About Self-control

A mind out of control will play tricks on you. Directed, it's your greatest friend.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." —JOHN DRYDEN

happiness, and trust he needed. "He who knows much about others may be learned, but be who understands himself is more intelligent. He who controls others may be powerful, but be who has mastered himself is mightier still.

Buddha once said to a man who was insulting and criticizing him, "If someone offers you a gift and you decline to accept it, to whom does it belong?" The man replied, "Then it belongs to the person who offered it." To which Buddha replied, "That is correct.  So if I decline to accept your abuse, does it not then still belong to you?

No; — I do not think that. But her temper is so ungovernable, and she has, if I may say so, been so spoilt among you here, — I mean by the girls, of course, — that she does not know how to restrain herself.

I am quite prepared to acknowledge that John Eames should have kept himself clear of Amelia Roper; but then young men so frequently do those things which they should not do!

E ate so much that he became too fat to see to eat his vittels. 

That I am responsible for how I have been feeling, not only for what I have been doing.

Through discipline comes freedom.

Anger Is A Gift

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.

But in all cases we must guard most carefully against what is pleasant, and pleasure itself, because we are not impartial judges of it.

We praise a man who feels angry on the right grounds and against the right persons and also in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time.

Virtue lies in moderation

For both excessive and deficient exercise ruin bodily strength, and, similarly, too much or too little eating or drinking ruins health, whereas the proportionate amount produces, increases, and preserves it.

The self-indulgent man, then, craves for all pleasant things or those that are most pleasant . . . Hence he is pained both when he fails to get them and when he is craving for them, for appetite involves pain.

What then is a moral virtue, the result of such a process duly directed? It is no mere mood of feeling, no mere liability to emotion, no mere natural aptitude or endowment, it is a permanent state of the agent's self, or, as we might in modern phrase put it, of his will, it consists in a steady self-imposed obedience to a rule of action in certain situations which frequently recur in human life.

Once more; it is harder, as Heraclitus says, to fight against pleasure than against anger:

El que se deja llevar de la cólera en ocasiones dadas contra los que lo merezcan, haciéndolo además de la manera, en el momento, y durante todo el tiempo que convenga, debe merecer nuestra aprobación. Esta es, sépase bien, la verdadera mansedumbre, si la mansedumbre es digna de elogios.

But of Reason this too does evidently partake, as we have said: for instance, in the man of self-control it obeys Reason: and perhaps in the man of perfected self-mastery, or the brave man, it is yet more obedient; in them it agrees entirely with the Reason.

desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. ???? ????? ??? ?????? ????? ???? ????? ?? ??? ???? ???? ????? ?? ?? ???????? ??? ????? ?? ??????

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self

And I draw no distinction between young in years, and youthful in temper and disposition: the defect to which I allude being no direct result of the time, but of living at the beck and call of passion, and following each object as it rises. For to them that are such the knowledge comes to be unprofitable, as to those of imperfect self-control: but, to those who form their desires and act in accordance with reason, to have knowledge on these points must be very profitable.

Most people who are ruined are ruined by attempting too much.