Quotes About Mastery

Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.

Nothing truly stops you. Nothing truly holds you back. For your own will is always within your control.

Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control; these three alone lead one to sovereign power.

The love of power is the demon of mankind.

Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear.

Calmness is the cradle of power.

True freedom is to have power over oneself for everything.

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

Opportunity has power over all things.

Power is of its nature evil, whoever wields it.

I speak Japanese the way a bear dances. It's not that the bear dances well that impresses people, it's the fact the bear dances at all.)

With pen and with pencil we're learning to say Nothing, more cleverly every day.

Indeed, pursuing pleasure, Seneca warns, is like pursuing a wild beast: On being captured, it can turn on us and tear us to pieces. Or, changing the metaphor a bit, he tells us that intense pleasures, when captured by us, become our captors, meaning that the more pleasures a man captures, "the more masters will he have to serve.

A much better, albeit less obvious way to gain satisfaction is not by working to satisfy our desires but by working to master them. In particular, we need to take steps to slow down the desire-formation process within us. Rather than working to fulfill whatever desires we find in our head, we need to work at preventing certain desires from forming and eliminating many of the desires that have formed. And rather than wanting new things, we need to work at wanting the things we already have. This

Irish poets, learn your trade,Sing whatever is well made.

All the great masters have understood that there cannot be great art without the little limited life of the fable, which is always better the simpler it is, and the rich, far-wandering, many-imaged life of the half-seen world beyond it

Irish poets, learn your trade, sing whatever is well made, scorn the sort now growing up all out of shape from toe to top.

Any singer who arrived in Shahajahanabad claiming distinction in the art would forget their sur and taal [note and beat] after hearing only one bar of his music and would accept the dust of his feet as the decoration of their eye…

Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you.

Till we come to try to put our own thoughts upon paper, we can have no notion how broke and imperfect they are, or find where the imperfection lies. Language is a scheme of machinery of so subtle a kind, that it is only by long habits that we can learn to conduct it in a masterly manner, or to the best purposes.

They are men who have no superiors, by

Excellence is inconveniently difficult.

Serious writing must nowadays be written for the sake of the art. The condition I describe is not extraordinary. Certain scientists, philosophers, historians, and many mathematicians do the same, advancing their causes as they can. One must be satisfied with that.

There is an art of which every man should be a master the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?