Quotes About Self-control

You can do what you want, at home. But when you go out, keep it together.

I quit smoking the day I found out I was pregnant, which was nine years ago. But I'll still smoke in a movie. I have other vices, you know, like potato chips and chardonnay - but not together.

Common sense had already told her that she must not do so. But common sense sometimes seemed a dreary taskmaster.

Philippa knew why her mother had kept everything bottled up inside. It was the innate compulsion some people—particularly women?—felt not to make a fuss, not to display their suffering and humiliation to the whole world or even to those who are nearest and dearest to them.

But she would not allow her thoughts to show on her face. She kept her lips tightly pressed together and her expression impassive.

If I were to touch you, I might find it impossible not at least to try to ravish you. It is a dreadful fate to be a notorious rake, Diana. We have so little self-control when confronted with beautiful ladies inside secluded buildings in the dead of night and in the middle of a storm.

She willed herself to show no emotion. She steeled herself for the kiss on the hand that she half expected. She came near to crumbling when he kissed her instead, very gently, on the lips. Had he not gone immediately, in fact, without even stopping to look into her face again, he would have seen the tears spring to her eyes; he would have heard the sobs that felt as if they would tear her ribs apart. But he had gone.

The trick is not to care. I have a perfect indifference to winning.

I was tempted to run down to the kitchen, but the memory of Dad's words stopped me. "Fearful, nervous, insecure"--wasn't that what he'd told Aunt Blythe? She'd already seen me behave like a baby once today. I didn't want to give a repeat performance.

As novelist Harry Crews once wrote, I'm the kind of person who—if he can't have too much of something—doesn't want any of it. In

I lock all my scaredness down in my stomach until the fear hardens into something I hardly notice. I myself harden into a person that I hardly notice.

And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself. Who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work - who is thus responsible to the work.

Capacity to Tolerate Boredom and Low Levels of Stimulation" is one of the recommended attributes on a Space Shuttle–era document drafted by the NASA In-House Working Group on Psychiatric and Psychological Selection of Astronauts.

I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves.

Para aproximarse a la perfección, un hombre debería conservar siempre la calma y la tranquilidad del espíritu sin permitir jamás que ésta fuera turbada por una pasión o un deseo momentáneo.

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

Jo no desitjo que les dones tinguin poder sobre els homes, sinó sobre elles mateixes. - Mary Shelley

I found that I was reaching, automatically, for another cigarette; my eyes and throat felt hot and aching, and my brain stupid. I let it slip back into the packet. I had smoked too much that evening already.

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

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity.

A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule.

Un ésser humà perfecte hauria de conservar sempre la ment en calma i en pau, i no permetre's mai que la passió o un desig transitori li destorbin la tranquil·litat. No crec pas que la persecució del saber sigui cap excepció a aquesta regla.

There is no feeling more awful than that which invades a weak heart bent upon its ungovernable impulses in contradiction to the dictates of conscience.