Quotes About Self-mastery

The great wisdom of life is that we can be masters of the things that try to enslave us.

If your body wants comfort, you try to make it learn to give up that. Try to make your body your slave and not you the slave of the body.

Most of us make our minds like spoilt children, allowing them to do whatever they want. Therefore it is necessary that Kriya-yoga should be constantly practised, in order to gain control of the mind, and bring it into subjection. The obstructions to Yoga arise from lack of control, and cause us pain. They can only be removed by denying the mind, and holding it in check, through the means of Kriya-yoga.

even so the sage can draw all his sense-organs inside," (Ibid. 58.) and nothing can force them out.

The mind uncontrolled and unguided will drag us down, down, for ever — rend us, kill us; and the mind controlled and guided will save us, free us.

you should work like a master and not as a slave; work incessantly, but do not do slave's work.

When we have succeeded in preventing all the forces in the world from throwing us off our balance, then alone we have attained to freedom, and not before.

Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education]. If I want to concentrate my mind upon a point, it goes there, and the moment I call, it is free [again]....

From Hinduism to the monotheisms through to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the common message is that we are all, naturally and potentially, inclined to reject the other, and to be intolerant and racist. Left to our own devices and our own emotions, we can be deaf, blind, dogmatic, closed and xenophobic: we are not born open-minded, respectful and pluralist. We become so through personal effort, education, self-mastery and knowledge.

instead, they sought to improve themselves so that they might become masters of their world.

We must master our good fortune or it will master us.

To conquer himself is the greatest victory that man can gain.

The greatest victory a man can win is victory over himself.

Great is the man who can overcome the world, but greater still is the man who can overcome himself, for he will have the world spinning on the palm of his hand.

The basis of the Juche Idea is that man is the master of all things and the decisive factor in everything.

No man can rule the unruly until he first rules himself.

The truly great man is he who would master no one, and who would be mastered by none.

Man who man would be, must rule the empire of himself.

There's a victory and defeat-the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats-which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

Since God is silent, man is his own master; he must live in a disenchanted world, submit everything to criticism, and make his own way.

Anger has its place, but it will not serve you here, the way of the warrior is the way of knowing. Of that knowledge requires you to use anger, then you use anger, but you cannot wrest forth knowledge by losing your temper.

First, let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered...

First, let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered. One may be a free man and yet be bound tighter than a slave. Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don't follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not.

Only 36 percent of the people we tested are able to accurately identify their emotions as they happen. This means that two thirds of us are typically controlled by our emotions and are not yet skilled at spotting them and using them to our benefit.