100 Self-Mastery Quotes
Here are 100 Self-Mastery quotes. Enjoy!
A man can do all things if he but wills them.— Leon Battista Alberti
A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.— James Allen
A man is what he thinks all day long.— Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man who governs his passions is a master of the world. We must either command them, or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil.— St. Dominic
A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.— Oscar Wilde
A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve.— Mahatma Gandhi
A will finds a way.— Orison Swett Marden
Affirmations and denials are the binding and loosing agencies of our human life. What we persistently affirm we increase. What we persistently deny we decrease. How many of us by our affirmed faith in negative things bind them to us? We wonder and question why such negative things appear repeatedly in our life. We may quite likely find the answer in our habits of affirmation.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
All know the way, but few actually walk it.— Bodhidharma
Any significant long-term change requires long-term practice, whether that change has to do with playing the violin or learning to be a more open, loving person. We all know people who say that they have been permanently changed by experiences of a moment or a day or a weekend. But when you check it out you’ll generally discover that those who ended up permanently changed had spent considerable time preparing for their life-changing experience or had continued diligently practicing the new behavior afterward.— Michael Murphy and George Leonard
Awareness by itself is not enough: it must be joined by mastery. We need gradually to develop a steering ability to keep ourselves from slipping mechanically into this or that sub-personality. Thus we become able to identify with each part of our being as we wish. We can have more choice. It is the difference between being impotently transported by a roller coaster and, instead, driving a car and being able to choose which way to go and for what purpose to make the journey.— Piero Ferrucci, What We May Be, p. 51
Be master OF mind rather than mastered BY mind— Zen Saying
Be the change you want to see in the world.— Mahatma Gandhi
Before complaining that you are a slave to another, be sure that you are not a slave to self. Look within;…You will find there, perchance, slavish thoughts, slavish desires, and in your daily life and conduct slavish habits. Conquer these; cease to be a slave to self, and no man will have the power to enslave you.— James Allen
Being a warrior is not about the act of fighting, it’s about being so prepared to face a challenge and believing so strongly in a cause that you are fighting for that you refuse to quit.— Richard J. Machowicz
Being out of control is one of the worst feelings in the world, sometimes even worse than pain. It is its own kind of pain.— Danzae Pace
Character is not a single quality but a three dimensional achievement built on discipline, direction and dedication.— Kenneth L Wilson
Character is what you are in the dark.— Dwight L. Moody
Do not consider painful what is good for you.— Euripides
Do you want to know the man against whom you have the most reason to guard yourself? Your looking glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.— Richard Whately
Energy and persistence conquer all things.— Benjamin Franklin
Find your independence of things, and you will enjoy them more and will have more to enjoy.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
First say to yourself what you would be, and then do what you have to do.— Epictetus
Freedom is born of self-discipline. No individual, no nation, can achieve or maintain liberty without self-control. The undisciplined man is a slave to his own weaknesses.— Alan Valentine
Great souls have wills; feeble ones have only wishes.— A Chinese Proverb
Habit is a cable. We weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.— Horace Mann
He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.— Proverbs 16:32, The Holy Bible
He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.— Lao-tzu
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.— Friedrich Nietzsche
He who is living without discipline is exposed to grievous ruin…Who hath a harder battle to fight than he who striveth for self-mastery? And should be our endeavor, even to master self, and thus daily to grow stronger than self and go on unto perfections.— Thomas a Kempis
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them.— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
How shall I be able to rule over others when I have not full power and command over myself?— Francois Rabelais
I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.— Pietro Aretino
I believe that if you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.— Eddie Rickenbacker
I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.— Augustus William Hare
I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.— Dr. Wayne Dyer
I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who overcomes his enemies, for the hardest victory is victory over self.— Aristotle
I hold it truth, with him who sings— Tennyson
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.— Thomas Jefferson
If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn’t seem so wonderful at all.— Michelangelo
If thou canst walk on water, thou art no better than a straw. If thou canst fly in the air, thou art no better than a fly. Conquer thy heart that thou mayest become somebody.— Ansari
If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.— Mary Pickford
It is a great evil, as well as a misfortune, to be unable to utter a prompt and decided “No.”— Charles Simmons
It seems to me that the term ‘free will’ is one of the most manipulated and exploited terms. The real explanation of free will is not that you have free will but that your will can eventually make you free, that will can liberate you, that will can release you from slavery.— Torkom Saraydarian
It’s not that some people have willpower and some don’t. It’s that some people are ready to change and others are not.— James Gordon
Keep your hand firmly upon the helm of thought.— James Allen
In the bark of your soul reclines the commanding Master;
He does but sleep; wake Him.
Self -control is strength;
Right thought is Mastery;
Calmness is power.
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.— Johann von Goethe
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.— Lao-tzu
Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.— Marie Chapian
Life is like a game of chess, in which there are an infinite number of complex moves possible. The choice is open, but the move contains within itself all future moves. One is free to choose, but what follows is the result of one’s choice. From the consequences of one’s action there is never any escape.— Shelley Smith, The Ballad of the Running Man
Mastery.- We have reached mastery when we neither mistake nor hesitate in the achievement.— Friedrich Nietzsche
Mind is all that counts.— Robert Collier
Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.— Seneca
My will shall shape my future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man’s doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.— Elaine Maxwell
Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.— George Washington Carver
No man can be free until he conquers himself.— Thomas O’Shaughnessy
No man is free who is not master of himself.— Epectitus
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me.— Michel de Montaigne
Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose.— Benjamin Disraeli
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.— Henry Ford
One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.— Leonardo da Vinci
One ship drives east and another drives west— Emma Wheeler Wilcox
With the self-same winds that blow.
‘Tis the set of the sails,
And Not the gales,
Which tell us the way to go.
One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield.— Buddha
Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.— Albert Einstein
Our destiny changes with our thoughts; we shall become what we wish to become, do what we wish to do, when our habitual thoughts correspond with our desires.— Orison Swett Marden
Over the times thou hast no power…Solely over one man thou hast quite absolute power. Him redeem and make honest.— Thomas Carlyle
People do not lack strength, they lack will.— Victor Hugo
Perhaps the richest persons in the world are those who have both a rich inner life and abundance in their outward life as wall; but the man whose inner world is rich, though he possesses few material things, is far richer than he whose inner life is starved and whose outer world is filled with possessions for which he must be accountable.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.— Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline
Self mastery comes through denial of the little things.— Unknown
Self-discipline, the key to eternal life, is doing something that needs to be done whether or not you find it convenient. Self-discipline is usually motivated by our convictions, our internal hopes, and our desires.— Robert L. Simpson
Strength is a matter of the made-up mind.— John Beecher
Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.— Earl Wilson
The alternative to discipline is disaster.— Vance Havner
The best day of your life is the one on which you decide your life is your own. No apologies or excuses. No one to lean on, rely on, or blame. The gift is yours – it is an amazing journey – and you alone are responsible for the quality of it. This is the day your life really begins.— Bob Moawad
The conquest that man is destined to make in this world is not, as he often supposes, a material, warlike conquest; but is instead the conquest of his own inner world and the mastery of his own God-given inner powers.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
The cyclone derives its powers from a calm center. So does a person.— Norman Vincent Peale
The difference between great people and everyone else is that great people create their lives actively, while everyone else is created by their lives, passively waiting to see where life takes them next. The difference between the two is the difference between living fully and just existing.— Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited
The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.— Plato
The greatest waste in the world is the difference between what we are and what we could become.— Ben Herbster
The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure, by his self-abandonment. There is no other limitation in either direction. And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish a dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. He who masters himself shall be king.— Unknown
The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.— Mevlana Rumi
The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.— Dale Carnegie
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.— Alice Walker
The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.— Herbert Spencer
The most useless are those who never change through the years.— James Barrie
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.— Robert Byrne
The true value of the human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which one has attained liberation from the self.— Albert Einstein
The will is master of the heart.— A.W. Tozer
There is a constant relationship between the world within us and the world about us. An old maxim of Hermes says, “As within, so without; as without, so within.” This is the true basis of enduring demonstration. What we attract from the world about us as the response to what we are radiating from within ourselves is bound to us by ties that are sturdy and strong.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
There is not great talent without great will power.— Honore de Balzac
Tomorrow is the only day in the year that appeals to a lazy man.— Jimmy Lyons
We can attain to virtually anything to which we will give ourselves sufficiently. Persistent, patient, loving effort will overcome the most unpromising beginnings.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
We deceive ourselves when we say we have not time. Every one has the same amount of time – all the time there is.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
We each have only one life to live. How terrible it would be to come to the end of your life and realize you did not live to your fullest God-given potential.— Garold N. Larson
We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.— George Sheehan
What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage.— Bruce Barton
What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.— Victor Frankl
What we give out comes back to us increased and multiplied. This is the spiritual law of prosperity. That which we are and express binds to us as with invisible hoops of steel its likeness in the world about us.— Ernest C. Wilson, Every Good Desire
What you have to do and the way you have to do it is incredibly simple. Whether you are willing to do it, that’s another matter.— Peter F. Drucker
What, man, thou seest,— Unknown
That too become thou must;
God if thou seest God,
Dust if thou seest dust.
When the student is ready, the master appears.— Buddist Proverb
When you blame others, you give up your power to change.— Douglas Noel Adams
When you see a thing clearly in your mind, your creative ‘’success mechanism” within you takes over and does the job much better than you could do it by conscious effort or willpower.— Maxwell Maltz
Who contains himself goes seldom wrong.— Confucious
Why do we do what we do when we know what we know?— Garold N. Larson
Willingness is essential in any initiation or in making any dream come true. “I can’t” often means “I won’t.” You can change “I won’t” to “I will” with will power.— Marcia Wieder
Willpower is the art of replacing one habit for another.— Michael Garofalo
Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.— Dan Millman
Without consistency there is no moral strength.— John J. Owen
You cannot attain mastery by patterning yourself after another or by following custom or tradition. Sheep do that. Masters and leaders never do.— Roger McDonald, The Message of a Master
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.— Jim Rohn