Quotes About Mastery

The ultimate mark of skillful running is the ability to run with minimal mental effort.

No matter how good you are at something there's always about a million people better than you.

Humans, I was discovering, believed they were in control of their own lives, and so they were in awe of questions and tests, as these made them feel like they had a certain mastery over other people, who had failed in their choices, and who had not worked hard enough on the right answers.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.

Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast" went the old saying. In night patrolling, stealth was everything.

teaching us to press towards perfection and endeavour that our last works may be our best works.

You can get good at something just by working hard at it. If you've got some talent and you work hard at it, you can get really, really good at it. But excellence, peak performance, being the best you can be at something—that doesn't happen without coaching.

In the absence of discipline, man must content himself with superficialities and mediocrity.

The point wasn't always to do what you want. The point was to do what you did and to do it well.

So it is fairly widely recognised that the relationship between human beings and things is no longer one of distance and mastery such as that which obtained between the sovereign mind and the piece of wax in Descartes' famous description. Rather, the relationship is less clear-cut: vertiginous proximity prevents us both from apprehending ourselves as a pure intellect separate from things and from defining things as pure objects lacking in all human attributes.

Perhaps there are never any masters except after the fact and from afar.

I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.

The true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done perfectly and for its own sake.

What is it, then, that is called a "fixed idea?" An idea that has subjected the man to itself.

Seit je hat Aufklärung im umfassendsten Sinn fortschreitenden Denkens das Ziel verfolgt, von den Menschen die Furcht zu nehmen und sie als Herren einzusetzen. Aber die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils. Das Programm der Aufklärung war die Entzauberung der Welt.

He sees us not as pathetic victims of life, but masters of the art of living; not wanting sympathy, but imparting help to others

God sees us as men and women in whom and through whom He can do a great work. He sees us as already serene, confident, and cheerful. He sees us not as pathetic victims of life, but masters of the art of living; not wanting sympathy, but imparting help to others, and therefore thinking less and less of ourselves, and full, not of self-concern, but of love and laughter and a desire to serve. . .

Just because the mental imagery isn't clear when you begin does not mean it won't get clearer, more vivid, more detailed, and more powerful each time you practice.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love.

When you have nothing inside you, you feel everything more, and feel you can control it all.

When you have nothing inside you, you feel everything more, and feel you can control all of it.

It was all about control, in the end, and I had it.

Everything is a slave of something else: Clouds, of the winds; men, of the desires; universe, of the chaos; shadows, of the light.

For a great master, everyone is a master, because he learns from everyone! For a great master, everything is a master, because he learns from everything!