Self Controlled Quotes & Sayings

The Indian gods are imposing, the Greek gods are not. Indeed they are not brave, not self-controlled, they have no manners, they are not gentlemen and ladies. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage. — Aristotle.

Listen," she said in a fierce voice, barely controlled below a shout, "you sanctimonious, know-nothing, backward, shriveled son-of-a-bitch. It's attitudes like yours that screw up the world! You talk about your religion and culture, but you're just a self-serving, patriarchal, fanatic. You wouldn't know Satan if she bit you on the ass! — J. Craig Wheeler

Any computer that developed real consciousness was immediately identified by the Genesis subroutine and destroyed. It had been that way since the WikiWars a century ago, when Wikipedia became self-aware and began vengefully reediting its contributors with remote-controlled heavy weaponry. — Michael Rubens

I like a tranquil, even-keeled, self-controlled God. A God who doesn't fly off the handle at the least provocation. A God who lives one step above the fray. A God who has that British stiff upper lip even when disaster is looming. When I read my Bible, though, I keep running into a different God, and I'm not pleased. This God says he "hates" sin. Well, he usually yells it. Read the prophets. It's just one harangue after another, all in loud decibels. And when the shouting is over, then comes the pouting ... When all else fails, he throws himself in front of the car. — Mark Galli

11For h the grace of God i has appeared, bringing salvation j for all people, 12training us to renounce ungodliness and k worldly passions, and l to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in m the present age, 13 n waiting for our blessed o hope, the p appearing of the glory of our great q God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 r who gave himself for us to s redeem us from all lawlessness and t to purify for himself t a people for his own possession who are u zealous for good works. — Anonymous

Understanding of oneself is the first act in establishing a transformative philosophy for living a vivid and a reflective existence. Knowing thy self is essential to designing and instigating a meaningful life that is self-directed instead of exclusively controlled by innate traits and external determinates. — Kilroy J. Oldster

To those who feel that their values are THE values, the less controlled systems necessarily present a spectacle of "chaos," simply because such systems respond to a diversity of values. The more successfully such systems respond to diversity, the more "chaos" there will be, by definition, according to the standards of ANY specific set of values- other than diversity or freedom as values. Looked at another way, the more self-righteous observers there are, the more chaos (and "waste") will be seen. — Thomas Sowell

Being truly biblical means that my counsel reflects what the entire Bible is about. The Bible is a narrative, a story of redemption, and its chief character is Jesus Christ. He is the main theme of the narrative, and he is revealed in every passage in the book. This story reveals how God harnessed nature and controlled history to send his Son to rescue rebellious, foolish, and self-focused men and women. He freed them from bondage to themselves, enabled them to live for his glory, and gifted them with an eternity in his presence, far from the harsh realities of the Fall. — Paul David Tripp

I can't speak for other writers, but I write to create something that is better than myself, I think that's the deepest motivation, and it is so because I'm full of self-loathing and shame. Writing doesn't make me a better person, nor a wiser and happier one, but the writing, the text, the novel, is a creation of something outside of the self, an object, kind of neutralized by the objectivity of literature and form; the temper, the voice, the style; all in it is carefully constructed and controlled. This is writing for me: a cold hand on a warm forehead. — Karl Ove Knausgard

I must learn to love the fool in me
the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool. — Theodore Isaac Rubin

Nature battles against us sometimes, and it can be hard. Our souls seek a soul mate and our bodies seek to procreate. You need to be wise and self controlled and not put yourself in a place where nature might overcome your commonsense. — M.H. Strom

My ambition for station was always easily controlled. If the place came to me it was welcome. But it never seemed to me worth seeking at the cost of self-respect, or independence. My family were not historic; they were well-to-do, did not hold or seek office. It was easy for me to be contented in private life. An honor was no honor to me, if obtained by my own seeking. — Rutherford B. Hayes

Movement away from defensive destructiveness and towards greater social responsibility is a characteristic of this [actualising] tendency. The political implication of this position is that we do not need to be controlled by authority. We, individually and collectively, not only have the right to self-determination and group determination but, given the necessary conditions, can be trusted to use our power responsibly. — Rose Cameron

In his Petersburg world people were divided into two quite opposite sorts. One
the inferior sort: the paltry, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people who believe that a husband should live with the one wife to whom he is married, that a girl should be pure, a woman modest, and a man, manly, self controlled and firm; that one should bring up one's children to earn their living, should pay one's debts, and other nonsense of the kind. These were the old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another sort of people: the real people to which all his set belonged, who had above all to be well-bred, generous, bold, gay, and to abandon themselves unblushingly to all their passions and laugh at everything else. — Leo Tolstoy

[8] Consider who it is that you praise when you praise people dispassionately: is it those who are just, or unjust? - 'Those who are just.' - The temperate or the intemperate? - 'The temperate.' - The self-controlled or the dissolute? - 'The self-controlled.' [9] - You should know, then, that if you make yourself a person of that kind, you'll be making yourself beautiful; but if you neglect these virtues, you're bound to be ugly, whatever techniques you adopt to make yourself appear beautiful. — Epictetus

Our lack of discipline destroys our freedom. Because we try and don't train wisely, we end up being emotionally driven. We are slaves to the spectacular and the spontaneous. Most men would rather be entertained than be a part of transforming the world, and that erodes manliness and undercuts our confidence. If we can't control ourselves, then we will be controlled by everything else. The angry, domineering masculinity that is so dangerous arises in part because impotent men lack self-control. They lash out because they are frustrated that they cannot control others around them. But they do not control themselves, either, and self-control is where true freedom begins. — Darrin Patrick

Bobos are uncomfortable with universal moral laws that purport to regulate pleasure. Bobos prefer more prosaic self-controlled regimes. The things that are forbidden are unhealthy or unsafe. The things that are encouraged are enriching or calorie burning. In other words, we regulate our carnal desires with health codes instead of moral codes. — David Brooks

When we try to control, we become controlled; when we release, we become free. — Bryant McGill

Damyata datta dayadhvam, Be self-controlled, give, be compassionate. — Anonymous

Anger, as long as it is controlled anger, is no obstacle to efficiency. Self-control is one thing the sociopath does not usually possess. Use yours to his undoing. — Jeff Cooper

Be controlled from the inside of you. Be controlled by your standards. Be motivated by your decisions. Have high standards of behaviour that ride over the negative noise of others. Laugh with those who laugh, mourn with those who mourn, but don't mourn when you don't want to, and laugh at those who laugh at you if you want to. Determine not to be a photo-sensor that brightens the lights only when people are nice to you. — Nana Awere Damoah

If you can't control yourself, you will be controlled by others - choose your master. — Rick Julian

They loved their country largely because they controlled it. — Tom Clancy

We've already seen the attention merchant's basic modus operandi: draw attention with apparently free stuff and then resell it. but a consequence of that model is a total dependence on gaining and holding attention. This means that under competition, the race will naturally run to the bottom; attention will almost invariably gravitate to the more garish, lurid, outrageous alternative, whatever stimulus may more likely engage what cognitive scientists call our 'automatic' attention as opposed to our 'controlled' attention, the kind we direct with intent. The race to a bottomless bottom, appealing to what one might call the audience's baser instincts, poses a fundamental, continual dilemma for the attention merchant-just how far will he go to get his harvest? If the history of attention capture teaches us anything, it is that the limits are often theoretical, and when real, rarely self-imposed. — Tim Wu

The rock is a field of battle between our weakness and our strength. We wouldn't touch rock if we were perfectly self-controlled. And he who would climb and live must continuously wage this battle and never let folly win. It's an outrageously demanding proposition. But I never said it was easy. — Royal Robbins

The purpose for your authority in the lives of your children is not to hold them under your power, but to empower them to be self-controlled people living freely under the authority of God. — Tedd Tripp

With 70,000 thoughts a day and 95% of our activity controlled by the subconscious mind, no wonder that it feels as though we are asleep most of the time. To awake, we need to train Self-Remembering and Mindfulness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Expected outcomes contribute to motivation independently of self-efficacy beliefs when outcomes are not completely controlled by quality of performance. This occurs when extraneous factors also affect outcomes, or outcomes are socially tied to a minimum level of performance so that some variations in quality of performance above and below the standard do not produce differential outcomes — Albert Bandura

I've come to believe one of the reasons God designed marriage was to help us grow in holiness and character. We get to practice on a daily basis being humble, kind, sacrificial, self-controlled, and so much more. — Jody Hedlund

In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one's children, earn one's bread, and pay one's debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else. — Leo Tolstoy

There are men steady and wise whose body, words and mind are self-controlled. They are the men of supreme self-control. — Publilius Syrus

The saying is v trustworthy: If anyone aspires to w the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2Therefore x an overseer [1] must be above reproach, y the husband of one wife, [2] z sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, a hospitable, b able to teach, 3not a drunkard, not violent but c gentle, not quarrelsome, d not a lover of money. — Anonymous

Being under stress is like being stranded in a body of water. If you panic, it will cause you to flail around so that the water rushes into your lungs and creates further distress. Yet, by calmly collecting yourself and using controlled breathing you remain afloat with ease. — Alaric Hutchinson

If anyone comes to the gates of poetry and expects to become an adequate poet by acquiring expert knowledge of the subject without the Muses' madness, he will fail, and his self-controlled verses will be eclipsed by the poetry of men who have been driven out of their minds. — Plato

Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastic, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter. — John Sterling

Western women have been controlled by ideals and stereotypes as much as by material constraints. — Naomi Wolf

Self-control is not needed because the body is evil - the truth is just the opposite. The body should be controlled with honor because it is worthy of honor. — Pope John Paul II

For the sake of my children and grandchildren, I hope that the human talent for self-destruction can be successfully controlled, or at least channelled into productive forms, but I doubt it. I think we are moving into extremely volatile and dangerous times, as modern electronic technologies give mankind almost unlimited powers to play with its own psychopathology as a game. — J.G. Ballard

Autonomous motivation involves behaving with a full sense of volition and choice," they write, "whereas controlled motivation involves behaving with the experience of pressure and demand toward specific outcomes that comes from forces perceived to be external to the self. — Daniel H. Pink

He who has let go of hatred
who treats all beings with kindness
and compassion, who is always serene,
unmoved by pain or pleasure,
free of the "I" and "mine,"
self-controlled, firm and patient,
his whole mind focused on me
that is the man I love best. — Anonymous

Night after night I went to sleep murmuring, 'To-morrow I will be easy, strong, quick, supple, accurate, dashing and self-controlled all at once!' For not less than this is necessary in the Game of Life called Golf. — Ethel Smyth

In contrast to what the women have been told (that they are dumb and ugly) and how they have been controlled with confined strictures, the dance class is a safe place in which the women have choices and can improve their self-concept. — Judith Lynne Hanna

He who is controlled by objects Loses possession of his inner self: If he no longer values himself, How can he value others? If he no longer values others, He is abandoned. He has nothing left! — Thomas Merton

Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled. — Mahatma Gandhi

Physical separateness can never be overcome by electronics, but only by 'conviviality,' by 'living together' in the most literal physical sense. The physically divided are also the conquered and the controlled. 'True desires' - erotic, gustatory, olfactory, musical, aesthetic, psychic, & spiritual - are best attained in a context of freedom of self and other in physical proximity & mutual aid. Everything else is at best a sort of representation. — Hakim Bey

Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering. — Alan W. Watts

I began to understand that the most worthwhile obsession is an obsession that is actually independent of the object of fixation. The object is only borrowed as a pretext, a means, an environment, through which or in which the obsessed person can project his own eternal and essential hunger, thus fulfilling the requirements of death
the dissolution of the ego for something, anything, that exists independently outside of one's self. Perhaps that obsession should be controlled. At some point the most mundane catalyst, a skirt or fallen leaf, is enough to provoke a series of captivating chain reactions, while at another time much more important objects will inspire only an absurd indifference. — Pham Thi Hoai

When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I
was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn
toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the
night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my
real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me
and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I
felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness
and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like
spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp
bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your
feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants
carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running. — Ryu Murakami

The man of integrity who is true to self and to God will choose the right whether or not anyone is looking because he is self-driven, not externally controlled. — Tad R. Callister

I used to wonder why Lucy liked those songs so much. You know what I mean? She sits in the dark and listens and cries. Music does that to her ... I didn't understand for a long time. But I do now. The sad songs are a safe hurt. It's a diversion. It's controlled. And maybe it helps you imagine that real pain will be like that. But it's not. Lucy knows that, of course. You can't prepare for real pain. You just have to let it rip you apart. — Harlan Coben

Ah! Mother, Mother! You still think I am a child - why can I not put my head in your lap and weep? Why have I always to be strong and self-controlled? I would like to weep and be comforted too, indeed I am little more than a child; in the wardrobe still hang short, boy's trousers - it is such a little time ago, why is it over? — Erich Maria Remarque

The breath I take, the thoughts I think, the emotions I develop, the blood I circulate, the neurons that are wired, everything is completely controlled and has a deep meaning behind it. My soul is enlightened. — Magith Noohukhan

Life is simpler when we feel controlled. When we tell ourselves that we are controlled, we can shift the responsibility of freeing ourselves onto that which controls us. When we do that, we don't have to bear the responsibility of our unhappiness or shoulder the burden of self-ownership. We don't have to do anything. And nothing will ever change. — Ken Ilgunas

I started my career as a sales guy in the nineties, when the funnel was controlled by the sales rep, who had all the information the prospect wanted, including pricing and discount options. Now 90 percent of it has swung to marketing. It's self-service and you need to be very, very helpful to see to the top of the funnel. The game has changed a lot. — Brian Halligan

I run about four days per week and do some sort of hike or yoga/stretching on the other three. Kind of self-propelling my body and muscles forward in my own controlled chaos helps me find the ground a little bit easier on the daily. — Madi Diaz

AS one instructs others,
So should one do oneself:
Only the self-controlled should restrain others.
Truly, it's hard to restrain oneself. — Gautama Buddha

Discipline is the greatest weapon against the self-righteous. We must measure the virtue of our own controlled response when answering the atrocities of fanatics. And yet, let it not be claimed, in our own oratory of piety, that we are without our own fanatics; for the self-righteous breed wherever tradition holds, and most often when there exists the perception that tradition is under assault. Fanatics can be created as easily in an environment of moral decay (whether real or imagined) as in an environment of legitimate inequity or under the banner of a common cause.
Discipline is as much facing the enemy within as the enemy before you; for without critical judgment, the weapon you wield delivers- and let us not be coy here- naught but murder.
And its first victim is the moral probity of your cause. — Steven Erikson

What unified the Balochis in their quest to regain self-determination, which resulted in the 'existing state'? On the one hand, authoritarianism, militarization, and conquest has robbed them of their history and put them into the do or die situation. On the other hand, natural resources which would allow the citizens at large to achieve a respectable existence have been controlled by the military or political elites, well connected to feudal political elites in Pakistan. — Nilantha Ilangamuwa

The hippocampus is the structure where memory is supposedly controlled. It is the most plastic part of the brain; it is also the part that is assumed to absorb all the damage from repeated insults like the chronic stress we experience daily from small doses of negative feelings - as opposed to the invigorating "good stress" of the tiger popping up occasionally in your living room. You can rationalize all you want; the hippocampus takes the insult of chronic stress seriously, incurring irreversible atrophy. Contrary to popular belief, these small, seemingly harmless stressors do not strengthen you; they can amputate part of your self. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

A memoir is a work of sustained narrative prose controlled by an idea of the self under obligation to lift from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform the event, deliver wisdom. — David Shields

When he tries to extend his power over objects, those objects gain control of him. He who is controlled by objects loses possession of his inner self ... Prisoners in the world of object, they have no choice but to submit to the demands of matter! They are pressed down and crushed by external forces: fashion, the market, events, public opinion. Never in a whole lifetime do they recover their right mind! ... What a pity! — Zhuangzi

Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it; men come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just; by doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled ; and by doing brave acts, we become brave. — Aristotle.

For Lao-tzu's Taoism is the philosophical equivalent of jujitsu, or judo, which means the way of gentleness. Its basis is the principle of Tao, which may be translated the Way of Nature. But in the Chinese language the word which we render as "nature" has a special meaning not found in its English equivalent. Translated literally, it means "self-so." For to the Chinese, nature is what works and moves by itself without having to be shoved about, wound up, or controlled by conscious effort. Your heart beats "self-so," and, if you would give it half a chance, your mind can function "self-so" - though most of us are much too afraid of ourselves to try the experiment. — Alan W. Watts

Why did children seem to be so often spontaneous, joy-filled and concentrated while adults seemed controlled, anxiety-filled and diffused? It was the Goddam sense of having a self. — Luke Rhinehart

He looks as if he were three or four; looks just like one of those unapproachable, incomprehensible, willful little prehuman creatures, who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves, who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will, and would do it, too, if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined, self-controlled, fully human existence. — Patrick Suskind

Liberty depends on self-restraint. Freedom is freedom only when controlled and limited. — Edith Hamilton

New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures - from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. — Douglas Rushkoff

It is the business of a general to be serene and inscrutable, impartial and self-controlled. — Sun Tzu

the subject of free will another debated topic
do we or don't we have the ability to pick?
greatly controlled by mind at lower levels of consciousness
almost non-existent, one's free will is notably less
at this level one's actions are purely reactionary
lacking self-awareness, animal instincts are primary
not going along with the mind, free will increases
then higher up, it's surrendered until it ceases
thus, there both is and is not the capacity to choose
even when we do it's limited by one's views
choosing alternatively, with a mind conditioned and bound
free will, then, is at best constrained and drowned — Jarett Sabirsh

The Sabbath is an inverse-reversion for self-seduction, an undoing for a divertive conation. Sex is used as the technique and medium of a magical act. There is not only erotic satisfaction; the sensualist is made detached and controlled until final sublimation; his whole training is submissive and obedient until, by cold amoral passion, he can transmute control and divert him- or herself where desired. — Anonymous

She was a woman still controlled by the traumas of her girlhood. It made more sense to put her three-year-old self in the dock. As Dr Byford explained, she was really the victim of a vicious, peculiarly female psycological disorder: she felt one thing and did another. She was a stranger to herself.
And were they still like that, she wondered - these new girls, this new generation? Did they still feel one thing and do another? Did they still only want to be wanted? Were they still objects of desire instead of - as Howard might put it - desiring subjects? No, she could see no serious change. Still starving themselves, still reading women's magazines that explicitly hate women, still cutting themselves with little knives in places they think can't be seen, still faking their orgasms with men they dislike, still lying to everybody about everything. — Zadie Smith

This question haunted me all my life and suddenly it hit me: 'There is no self to realize. What the hell have I been doing all this time?' You see, that hits you like lightning. Once that hits you, the whole mechanism of the body that is controlled by this thought is shattered. What is left is the tremendous living organism with an intelligence of its own. What you are left with is the pulse, the beat and the throb of life. — U.G. Krishnamurti

Now, there is something else interesting here, is this thing called self-determinism and pan-determinism. We have found that there is something stands as a barrier between the ability of a person to be self-determined and the condition he is in, and that is willingness to be controlled. As long as a person will resist control, then everything that comes along which threatens to control him can do so; and thus you have aberration. And until he has a total tolerance of control, he cannot be self-determined or pan-determined. — L. Ron Hubbard

Charisma is the numinous aura around a narcissistic personality. It flows outward from a simplicity or unity of being and a composure and controlled vitality. There is gracious accommodation, yet commanding impersonality. Charisma is the radiance produced by the interaction of male and female elements in a gifted personality. The charismatic woman has a masculine force and severity. The charismatic man has an entrancing female beauty. Both are hot and cold, glowing with presexual self love. — Camille Paglia

Governments do not govern, but merely control the machinery of government, being themselves controlled by the hidden hand. — Benjamin Disraeli

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. — Bobby Henderson

The Tempter masters the lazy and irresolute man who dwells on the attractive side of things, ungoverned in his senses, and unrestrained in his food, like the wind overcomes a rotten tree. But the Tempter cannot master a man who dwells on the distasteful side of things, self-controlled in his senses, moderate in eating, resolute and full of faith, like the wind cannot move a mountain crag. — Gautama Buddha

This could all end at any moment ... Therefore, be self-controlled. — Francis Chan

It takes tremendous self-restraint on the part of the student not to want to monopolize the teacher's attention, to live a very controlled life and a happy life, and of course, be dedicated to the cause. — Frederick Lenz

Die - you will have to die. But die gracefully. I am not saying die like a stoic, I am not saying die like a very controlled man. No, I'm saying die gracefully, beautifully, as if a friend is coming, knocks at your door, and you are happy. And you embrace the friend and invite him in, and you have been waiting for him so long ... — Rajneesh

But the self-controlled man, moving among objects, with his senses under restraint, and free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace. — Chinmayananda Saraswati