Quotes About Mastery

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort. There must be the will to produce a superior thing.

No good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of a misunderstanding of the ends of art.

To study one good master till you understand him will teach you more than a superficial acquaintance with a thousand: power of criticism does not consist in knowing the names or the manner of many painters, but in discerning the excellence of a few.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

to some of the best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not be always possible to explain what pretty things they are making … the very perfection of their art is in their knowing so little about it

This is my rife. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rife is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I have master my life. My rife, without me, is useless. Without my rife, I am useless. I must fire my rife true. I must shoot before he shoots me. And I will. - Marine Rife Creed

the technique must be learned the way I learned it, by failures

Just middle-aged. Ideas used to grab me too. It's not that you get better ideas, the old ones just get tired. After a while you see that even dollars and cents are just an idea. Finally the only thing that masters is putting some turds in the toilet bowl once a day. They stay real, somehow. Somebody came up to me and said, 'I'm God,' I'd say, 'Show me your badge.

Being a great writer is not the same as writing great.

If that's what you want to do, then you should go do it-and do it well.

The importance of repetition until automaticity cannot be overstated. Repetition is the key to learning.

Whether in basketball or business, you must be able to perform all aspects of your job, not just part of it. You must be able to "get open" and "shoot." One without the other makes you a partial performer, someone who can be replaced because your skills are incomplete.

Non-doing can arise within action as well as in stillness. The inward stillness of the doer merges with the outward activity to such an extent that the action does itself. Effortless activity. Nothing is forced. There is no exertion of the will, no small-minded "I," "me," or "mine" to lay claim to a result, yet nothing is left undone. Non-doing is a cornerstone of mastery in any realm of activity.

The only artists for whom I would make way are - children. For me the paintings of children belong side by side with the works of the masters.

My father always used to say to me, it doesn't matter what the profession is, but if they're the best in their field, it will always be fascinating to watch.

We should master fear, instead of cultivating it.

What happens when you accept and embrace your fear? Fear becomes your weapon.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

I don't say that I never feel fear before a performance, but I have learned to channel it.

There is no fear. There are only two things. Trained and untrained.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it. Cowardice represses fear and is thereby mastered by it.

Much of the fear of doing something wrong vanishes when we are knowledgeable about what we are doing.

Those who fear the new are the ones who have mastered the old.

Fear is a powerful beast, if it is allowed the mastery.