Quotes About Self-mastery

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and if they will not adapt to me, I adapt to them. Montaigne, Of Presumption (1580)

The only competition worthy of a wise man is with himself.

You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.

Any fool can slide down the mountain, but it takes someone of character and discipline walk up one. - Luigi Donati

Life is a competition... Not with others, but with ourselves. We should seek each day to live stronger, better, truer lives. Each to master some weakness of yesterday. Each day to repair a mistake; Each day to surpass ourselves.

Happiness is the knowledge that one is more powerful than all the objects in the world and all the thoughts in one's own mind.

To think bad thoughts is really the easiest thing in the world. If you leave your mind to itself it will spiral down into ever increasing unhappiness. To think good thoughts, however, requires effort. This is one of the things that discipline and training is all about.

Master your mind and you will master your life

The instrument of leadership is the self, and mastery of the art of leadership comes from mastery of the self.

The pain beating in his brows was beyond belief. He wanted only to go while he was still master of himself; before this primitive desire to devastate them both should overpower him.

On the path of Budo one does not strive for victory over an opponent... one strives to avoid defeat by one's own self.

The philosophy of fasting calls upon us to know ourselves, to master ourselves, and to discipline ourselves the better to free ourselves. To fast is to identify our dependencies, and free ourselves from them.

Anything that can be controlled is Action not emotion!

You are the slave of your mind!

The ego is there, but I'm learning to channel it.

It's easy to become angry, but when you get better, you channel your energy into the game.

When you hang out with yourself, you learn to keep yourself in check.

Hand over your responses to the man who triggers them, and you have already lost the battle for self. Look beyond, and find yourself there instead.

The man who masters himself is delivered from the force that binds all creatures.

In the same degree in which a man's mind is nearer to freedom from all passion, in the same degree also is it nearer to strength.

Man's greatest victory is over oneself.

That a man can change himself…and master his own destiny is the conclusion of every mind who is wide-awake to the power of right thought."(Christian D. Larson)

As soon as extreme attachment comes, a man loses himself, he is no more master of himself, he is a slave.

because the hardest boss a man can ever have is himself.