Quotes About Mastery

It's none of their business that you have to learn how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.

It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting.

Eschew the monumental. Shun the Epic. All the guys who can paint great big pictures can paint great small ones.

It's this way, see--when a writer first starts out, he gets a big kick from the stuff he does, and the reader doesn't get any;then, after a while, the writer gets a little kick and the reader gets a little kick; and finally, if the writer's any good, he doesn't get any kick at all and the reader gets everything.

I don't have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well. – Thomas Hudson

There is no such thing as great writing - there is only great re-writing!

Que va," the boy said. "There are many good fishermen and some great ones. But there is only you.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn...

he who ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.

Qué va, the boy said. There are many good fisherman and some great ones. But there is only you.

It's none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Knowledge of the name gives him who knows it mastery even over the being and will of the god.

Genius is a gift we are given; mastery is the stewardship of our gifts.

We are called to fear only God. There is an important reason for this. What we fear is what we're subject to; our fears define our master. Where there is no fear, there is no control.

You have described only too well, replied the Master, where the difficulty lies...The right shot at the right moment does not come because you do not let go of yourself. You...brace yourself for failure. So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way--like the hand of a child.

The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

the Master's warning that we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.

Put the thought of hitting right out of your mind! You can be a Master even if every shot does not hit. The hits on the target is only an outward proof and confirmation of your purposelessness at its highest, of your egolessness, your self-abandonment, or whatever you like to call this state. There are different grades of mastery, and only when you have made the last grade will you be sure of not missing the goal.

How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and Master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone.

archery is still a matter of life and death to the extent that it is a contest of the archer with himself;