Mastery Quotes

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

If you don't know yourself, if you don't control yourself, if you don't have mastery over yourself, it's very hard to like yourself, except in some short-term, psych-up, superficial way.

Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

Every experience is a positive experience if I view it as an opportunity for growth and self-mastery.

I know of no genius but the genius of hard work.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

The ethos of redemption is realied in self-mastery, by means of temperance, that is, continence of desires.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?

A successful career will no longer be about promotion. It will be about mastery.

The foundation of lasting self-confidence and self esteem is excellence, mastery of your work.

Mere physical growing up, mere mastery of the bare necessities of subsistence will not suffice to reproduce the life of the group. Deliberate effort and the taking of thoughtful pains are required.

No man is invincible, and therefore no man can fully understand that which would make him invincible. Even with complete and thorough study there is always the possibility of being defeated and although one may be expert in a particular form, mastery is something a man never stops seeking to attain.

Mastery is not a question of genetics of luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desires that stirs you from within.

The artist brain is the sensory brain: sight and sound, smell and taste, touch.  These are the elements of magic, and magic is the elemental stuff of art.  In filling the well, think magic.  Think delight.  Think fun.  Do not think duty.  Do not do what you should do-spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text.  Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery.

Personal mastery teaches us to choose. Choosing is a courageous act: picking the results and actions which you will make into your destiny.

We believe human begins have existed for only a small fraction of cosmic history, because human race has been improving so rapidly in knowledge and technology that if people had been around for millions of years, the human race would be much further along in it's mastery.

The mastery of any subject requires that one identify himself with the particular state of consciousness appropriate to that subject.

Real freedom comes from the mastery, through knowledge, of historic conditions and race character, which makes possible a free and intelligent use of experience for the purpose of progress.

People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them-in effect, they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. The do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

The most fully actualized people that I studied over ten years consistently pushed the envelope. These people consistently demanded far more of themselves every day than anyone else ever expected from them. These people raised their standards and committed themselves from their hearts to be the best they could be and to live a life of uncommon wonder. This is what self-mastery is all about.

To arrive at a place called Mastery, you must commit to daily and rigorous practice. Enjoy practising your craft for its own sake without turning your attention to your ultimate destination. Understand, once and for all, that the journey is as important as the destination.

Ah, mastery... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing.

Often nothing keeps the pupil on the move but his faith in his teacher, whose mastery is now beginning to dawn on him .... How far the pupil will go is not the concern of the teacher and master. Hardly has he shown him the right way when he must let him go on alone. There is only one thing more he can do to help him endure his loneliness: he turns him away from himself, from the Master, by exhorting him to go further than he himself has done, and to "climb on the shoulders of his teacher."

Clarity breeds mastery. And the goals you set drive the actions you'll take.

On the other hand, I have never before so learned to know the Lord Jesus as a tender, loving Friend, who never forsakes us or casts us off when we are bad, but rather helps us to gain the mastery over sin.

People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can't pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as exotic but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.

Mastery of life is not a question of control, but of finding a balance between human and being...Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven.

For most of human history, we could only watch, like bystanders, the beautiful dance of Nature. But today, we are on the cusp of an epoch-making transition, from being passive observers of Nature to being active choreographers of Nature. The Age of Discovery in science is coming to a close, opening up an Age of Mastery.

The mastery of the turn is the story of how aviation became practical as a means of transportation. It is the story of how the world became small.

Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this.

After mastery comes artistry and not before.

One can be a great artist without being a great technician. There have been many famous ballet stars who did not have the ideal body or total mastery of all aspects of the art form, but on the stage they possessed magnetism-true artistry, by which I mean a charismatic quality. You can work with a coach to try and develop it, but a true artist has the ability to express his inner feelings naturally.

The proper timing of an attacking plan is a difficult matter which places great strain on a player's nerves. Mastery of this art is required for success in the international arena, but perfect mastery eludes even the very best chessplayers!

A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one's own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

At the utmost, the active-minded young man should ask of his teacher only mastery of his tools. The young man himself, the subject of education, is a certain form of energy; the object to be gained is economy of his force; the training is partly the clearing away of obstacles, partly the direct application of effort. Once acquired, the tools and models may be thrown away.

There is always, in the fine arts, a physical interface between the artist's esthetic vision and the material result he seeks. The interface may be the application of brush to canvas, chisel to marble, bow to string... It may be the control of voice in song or the control of body in dance. It is the mastery of the interface that comprises the artistry; it is what constitutes the 'art' in fine art.

There is no morality by instinct. There is no social salvation in the end without taking thought; without mastery of logic and application of logic to human experience.

The idea of duty, that recognition of something to be lived for beyond the mere satisfaction of self, is to the moral life what the addition of a great central ganglion is to animal life. No man can begin to mould himself on a faith or an idea without rising to a higher order of experience: a principle of subordination, of self-mastery, has been introduced into his nature; he is no longer a mere bundle of impressions, desires, and impulses.

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have obtained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

With age, art and life become one.

Nothing has a more sinister effect on art than the artist's desire to prove that he's good. The terrible temptation of idealism! You must achieve mastery over your idealism, over your virtue as well as over your vice, aesthetic mastery over everything that drives you to write in the first place - your outrage, your politics, your grief, your love!

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning.

If that one is already a great artist, who knows how to educe from a small piece of wood the face of a king or of a queen, an ant or a camel, how great then is the mastery which can form as actuality everything which is in all potentiality? Therefore, God, who is able to produce from the most minute piece of matter the similitude of all forms which can be in this world and in infinitely many worlds, is of admirable subtlety.

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count.

Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.

So long as he was personally present, [Alcibiades] had the perfect mastery of his political adversaries; calumny only succeeded in his absence.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.