Quotes About Mastery

Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn't romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it.

In order to be a world-class expert in anything, be it audiology, drama, music, art, gymnastics, whatever, one needs to have a minimum of 10,000 hours of practice. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that if you put in 10,000 hours that you will become an expert, but there aren't any cases where someone has achieved world-class mastery without it! So the time spent at the activity is indeed the most important and influential factor.

We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may "conquer" them.

Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training a mere beginner.

I'm a championship handball player. I'm a championship softball and baseball player. I used to be an extremely talented center in high school in football. I also dabbled in lacrosse and soccer. I'm really good at billiards, darts, shuffleboard.

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.

A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.

Without natural gifts technical rules are useless.

I'm not a good katana user, bo staff user.

There's always great things that champions do. It can be inside fighting, this person uses his range well, this person has a great right hand - anytime you fight a champion, there's multiple things that they do well, and you have to try to take those strengths away.

It really helps if you know your subject matter immediately. I find that enormously useful because then you can concentrate on all the usual novelistic things - the character, the plot and so forth - and you don't have to spend an enormous amount of time learning another trade, essentially.

Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.

By this way you may dress all sorts of horses in the utmost perfection, if you know how to practice it; a thing that is very easy in the hands of a master.

If we notice a few errors in the work of a proven master, we may and even will often be correct; if we believe, however, that he is completely and utterly mistaken, we are in danger of missing his entire concept.

Success doesn't happen quickly. It happens from doing the same thing over and over, becoming great at it, and delivering great value to consumers.

One reason why technology tends to catalyze itself is that advances depend upon previous mastery of simpler problems.

Most people thought you just waved your hands and sim-sallah-bim, but it was a lot more complex than that. Sorcery was not so much doing what you wanted to do but doing what you could do—or ingeniously finding a way around the physical limitations of the craft.

si sabes lo que te ha pasado, y lo entiendes, puedes dominarlo; si no lo sabes y no lo entiendes, entonces es eso lo que te domina a ti. Y te come por dentro.

The knack is art.

It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change.

It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. Of course people mutilate and modify, but these are fallen powers, and to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.

Man's first law is to watch over his own preservation; his first care he owes to himself; and as soon as he reaches the age of reason, he becomes the only judge of the best means to preserve himself; he becomes his own master.

However great a man's natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.