self-control Quotes

“It is easy to be calm when there is nothing to worry about . . . The true test of your self-control . . . is whether you can remain calm in a trying situation.”

“I have had many years to learn that losing my temper rarely helps.”

“He said positive liberty is self-mastery—the rule of the self, by the self. To have positive liberty, he explained, is to take control of one’s own mind; to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions and all other forms of self-coercion.”

I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control.

She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself.

“It is a good divine that follows his own instructions.”

“The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.”

“Men at some time are masters of their fates.”

“At length from us may find, who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe.”

“So this is how a person can come to despise himself-knowing he’s doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”

“Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense.”

A person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.

“Human will becomes truly creative and truly our own when it is wholly God’s, and this is one of the many senses in which he that loses his soul shall find it”

“Our thoughts make us what we are.”

“Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving.”

“Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”

“I must ignore the shops. I must practice frugality, go straight home, and plot my expenditure graph. If I need entertainment, I can watch some nice free television and perhaps make some inexpensive, nutritious soup.”

“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.”

“Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.”

“Conceal your heart, control your mouth. Beware of releasing the restraints in you; Listen if you want to endure in the mouth of the hearers. Speak after you have mastered the craft.”

“The first step to regain control of time is to decide what activities are most important so that we can plan to give them the proper priority during a day or a week or a month. ”

“Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind? Was there any place where I should not be a prey to myself? None.”

“The mind is the leader or forerunner of all actions.”

“To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace.”

“Nothing is written in the stars ... No one controls your destiny.”

“The power of the spoken word is one of life’s greatest mysteries. All you will ever be or accomplish hinges on how you choose to govern what comes out of your mouth.”

“No one said you can’t ever cry. Forget ‘manliness.’ If you need to take a moment, by all means, go ahead. Real strength lies in the control or, as Nassim Taleb put it, the domestication of one’s emotions, not in pretending they don’t exist.”

“Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata. Shantih shantih shantih.”

“Today Plato is nearly forgotten. His beliefs include the notion that people who govern should be intelligent, rational, self-controlled, and in love with wisdom, an idea that has long been discredited.”

“Be slow to anger and quick to forgive, and you will have friends for as long as you live.”

“A man should go where he won’t be tempted.”

“I don’t get nearly enough credit in life for the things I manage not to say.”

“No...but God bring misfortune to him who is so careless about his self-control as to prattle when he should hold his peace”

“You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make outselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. SO it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human.”

Mrs. Calladine was quietly mistress of herself.

“I should hardly call it ‘reasonable’ to lose your head,” said Antony, getting up from his chair and coming towards them.

“What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?”

It’s all very well to say resist temptation, but it’s ever so much easier to resist it if you can’t get the key.

Mrs. Allan says we should never make uncharitable speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don’t they? I simply can’t talk about Josie Pye without making an uncharitable speech, so I never mention her at all.

“How did you learn to keep still? That is what troubles me, for the sharp words fly out before I know what I’m about, and the more I say the worse I get, till it’s a pleasure to hurt people’s feelings and say dreadful things. Tell me how you do it, Marmee dear.”

“You ought to stop drinking if you can’t control yourself.

I was so humiliated, hurt, spurned, offended, angry, sorry,—I cannot hit upon the right name for the smart—God knows what its name was,—that tears started to my eyes. The moment they sprang there, the girl looked at me with a quick delight in having been the cause of them. This gave me power to keep them back and to look at her: so, she gave a contemptuous toss—but with a sense, I thought, of having made too sure that I was so wounded—and left me.

I felt impatient of him and out of temper with him; in which condition he heaped coals of fire on my head.

“He’s a wonderful man, without his living likeness; but I feel that I have to screw myself up when I dine with him,—and I dine more comfortably unscrewed.”

His mother was not used to the sight of Gregor, he might have made her ill, so Gregor hurried backwards to the far end of the couch.

Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne’ s slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.