Self Control Quotes

“If the entire world sought to make itself worthy of happiness rather than make itself happy, then the entire world would be happy.”
― Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

“Be nice. And if you can't do that, just don't be mean.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“If you do not have control over your mouth, you will not have control over your future.”
― Germany Kent

“One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free.”
― Jack Henry Abbott

“If I still need someone to calm my anger down,
then I surely need a scapegoat who enrages me.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“A man who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character.”
― Henry Hazlitt

“To live with tremendous and proud composure; always beyond —. To have and not to have one's affects, one's pro and con, at will; to condescend to them, for a few hours; to seat oneself on them as on a horse, often as on an ass — for one must know how to make use of their stupidity as much as of their fire. To reserve one's three hundred foregrounds; also the dark glasses; for there are cases when nobody may look into our eyes, still less into our "grounds." And to choose for company that impish and cheerful vice, courtesy. And to remain master of one's four virtues: of courage, insight, sympathy, and solitude.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“A life without regret can be attained by full awareness of one's actions in their present moment.”
― Michelle D. Rosado

“I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.”
― Peggy Noonan, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now

“Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.”
― Sheri S. Tepper

“This week, Zuma was quoted as saying, 'When the British came to our country, they said everything we are doing was barbaric, was wrong, inferior in whatever way.' But the serious critique of Zuma is not about who is a barbarian and who is civilised. It is about good governance, and this is a universal value, as relevant to an African village as it is to Westminster. If you are unable to keep your appetites in check, you are inevitably going to live beyond your means. And this means you are going to become vulnerable to patronage and even corruption. That is why Jacob Zuma's 'polygamy' is his achilles heel.”
― Mark Gevisser

“The skeptic says that the believer has lost his own mind under God. On the contrary, it is the people who follow God who are most like his children, who willingly and consciously walk in his will; but those who oppose him oppose him vainly and at their own expense, and, figuratively, seem to be more like his tools. They don't diminish his glory, but instead he still manages to use them in ways of unconsciously carrying out his will.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“If you are not in control of your thoughts then you are not in control of yourself. Without self-control, you have no real power, regardless of whatever else you accomplish. If you are not aware of the thoughts that you are thinking in each moment, then you are the rider with no reins, with no power over where you are going. You cannot control what you are not aware of. Awareness must come first.”
― Thomas M. Sterner, The Practicing Mind: Bringing Discipline and Focus into Your Life

“God grant ... that he may learn to understand in time, that who so is minded to do as he himself wills will soon enough see the day when he will find he has done that which he had never willed.”
― Sigrid Undset, The Axe

“[I]n other words, we should live with due knowledge of the course of things in the world. For whenever a man in any way loses self-control, or is struck down by a misfortune, grows angry, or loses heart, he shows in this way that he finds things different from what he expected, and consequently that he laboured under a mistake, did not know the world and life, did not know how at every step the will of the individual is crossed and thwarted by the chance of inanimate nature, by contrary aims and intentions, even by the malice inspired in others. Therefore either he has not used his reason to arrive at a general knowledge of this characteristic of life, or he lacks the power of judgement, when he does not again recognize in the particular what he knows in general, and when he is therefore surprised by it and loses his self-control. Thus every keen pleasure is an error, an illusion, since no attained wish can permanently satisfy, and also because every possession and every happiness is only lent by chance for an indefinite time, and can therefore be demanded back in the next hour. Thus both originate from defective knowledge. Therefore the wise man always holds himself aloof from jubilation and sorrow, and no event disturbs his ἀταραξία [ataraxia]."

—from_The World as Will and Representation_. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Paye in two volumes: volume I, p. 88”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Blood doesn't satisfy cravings. It magnifies them.”
― Matt Haig, The Radleys

“We should set our goals; then learn to control our appetites. Otherwise, we will lose ourselves in the confusion of the world.”
― Hark Herald Sarmiento

“In the endeavor to establish a difficult habit, for example, mere wishing will never carry it to a successful conclusion; our wishing must rise to the level of WANTING if this goal is to be achieved.”
― Ralph Alfred Habas, The Art of Self-Control

“He wanted to take Homer Wells in his arms, and hug him, and kiss him, but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control.”
― John Irving, The Cider House Rules

“Emotional content without self control burns the soul.
Self control without emotional content is yet untested.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“It amused him sometimes to consider that his friends, because he had a face which did not express his feelings very vividly and a rather slow way of moving, looked upon him as strong-minded, deliberate and cool. They thought him reasonable and praised his common sense; but he knew that his placid expression was no more than a mask, assumed unconsciously, which acted like the protective colouring of butterflies; and himself was astonished at the weakness of his will. It seemed to him that he was swayed by every light emotion, as though he were a leaf in the wind, and when passion seized him he was powerless. He had no self-control. He merely seemed to possess it because he was indifferent to many of the things which moved other people.

He considered with some irony the philosophy which he had developed for himself, for it had not been of much use to him in the conjuncture he had passed through; and he wondered whether thought really helped a man in any of the critical affairs of life: it seemed to him rather that he was swayed by some power alien to and yet within himself, which urged him like that great wind of Hell which drove Paolo and Francesca ceaselessly on. He thought of what he was going to do and, when the time came to act, he was powerless in the grasp of instincts, emotions, he knew not what. He acted as though he were a machine driven by the two forces of his environment and personality; his reason was someone looking on, observing the facts but powerless to interfere: it was like those gods of Epicurus, who saw the doings of men from their empyrean heights and had no might to alter one smallest particle of what occurred.”
― W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage

“The battle for self-control over an intense undesired habit consists of an endless series of skirmishes, in which our urges and our better angels clash several times each day.”
― Matthew D. Lieberman

“The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it.”
― James Surowiecki

“Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with.”
― Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington

“Our work activities are perhaps most interesting when the element of competition is present.”
― Ralph Alfred Habas, The Art of Self-Control

“Control thought-forms are the basis of our deepest moral crisis.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason

“I had seen her in a temper before – I tell her it's her French grandfather's fault, Mediterranean lack of self-control – and I knew she'd settle down now she'd taken it out on the tree.”
― Tana French, In the Woods

“Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“I am the line that I've drawn for myself.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When World Cries Blood: New Civil War Sonnets