self-mastery Quotes

“To master the virtue of the long sword is to govern the world and oneself; thus the long sword is the basis of strategy.”

“By training you will be able to freely control your own body, conquer men with your body, and with sufficient training you will be able to beat men in fights, be able to win with your eye, and beat ten men with your spirit. When you have reached this point, will it not mean you are invincible?”

“To become masters of love, we have to practice love. The art of relationship is also a whole mastery, and the only way to reach mastery is with practice.”

“The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.”

“You don’t need to justify your love, you don’t need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.”

“Crave not mastery in all, For the mastery that raised thee was thy bane and wrought thy fall.”

“The trouble with anger is, it gets hold of you. And then you aren’t the master of yourself anymore. Anger is.”

“Mastery of language affords remarkable power.”

“In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”

“You cannot have everything in the present. The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.”

“It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible.”

“What is important when you are young, is to train yourself to get by with little money and make the most of your youthful energy.”

“You must value learning above everything else.”

“No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you. If you desire an apprenticeship, if you want to learn and set yourself up for mastery, you have to do it yourself,and with great energy.”

“It is never wise to purposefully do without the benefits of having a mentor in your life. You will waste valuable time in finding and shaping what you need to know. But sometimes you have no choice.”

“The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.”