Quotes About Mastery

The student should master the entire work in not more than two hours.

Four Universal (Bodhisattva) Vows: "Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them; the deluding passions are inexhaustible, I vow to destroy them; the Dharma gates are manifold, I vow to know them; the Buddha Way is supreme, I vow to master it.

First learning, then proving I'd learned. Knowing and using the knowledge aren't the same thing.

It scares me how many things I've got to learn. How will I learn them?

Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing. And

The person who knows one thing and does it better than anyone else, even if it only be the art of raising lentils, receives the crown he merits. If he raises all his energy to that end, he is a benefactor of mankind and its rewarded as such.

What do you plan to do that others cannot do better?

Do not leave any unexplained, unnarrated situations, any closed doors; kick them down with a curse, even the ones that lead to embarrassing and shameful hallways you would prefer to forget. Don't be ashamed of any fall, of any sin... He who has not mastered the art of speaking shall remain forever caught in a trap.

To be master of any branch of knowledge, you must master those which lie next to it; and thus to know anything you must know all.

kufu means, as I have already explained, being without any suki (opening or flaw in terms of swordsmanship) or yudan (carelessness) and to become the thing itself.

If we negate ourselves and completely plunge into the objective world around us, all oppositions cease. The phrase goes, "The holy man has no self; and, therefore, everything becomes the holy man." By making ourselves empty and plunging deep into the surrounding world to be integrated with things, the surrounding world will in turn become ourselves. We and the world thus will be one, and we will be masters everywhere.

Therefore, kufu alludes to the earnest way each artisan applies himself to the art of his own choice.

In the Jiki-shinkage-ryu (the Straight-Mind-Shadow school of swordsmanship) there is a basic set of movements called Hojo which is indeed the most magnificent I have ever known. It is accompanied by deep breathing marked by the sound "Ah" when inhaling and "Um" when exhaling.

There is an infinite difference between a little wrong and just right, between fairly good and the best, between mediocrity and superiority.

Power gravitates to the man who knows how.

Superiority -- doing things a little better than anybody else can do them.

Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.

Weakness of skills can be overcome with strength of will.

Those who master money are free to serve others still mastered by it.

Ender Wiggin isn't a killer. He just wins—thoroughly.

In his famous novel 1984, O'Brien states frankly, "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. . . . The object of power is power.

With the deepest things in life, there is always more to knowing than knowing will ever know, so the deepest knowledge must be learned in life, from experience, and under a master.

Mastering our emotions has nothing to do with asceticism or repression, for the purpose is not to break the emotions or deny them but to "break in" the emotions, making them teachable because they are tamed.

When an artist is pumped up with the intention of creating a masterpiece, however, the work generally comes out poorly,