Self Control Quotes

Patience is the inclination to control the racing mind, which wants to jump ahead.

~ Balroop Singh

I was raised to believe that all I could ever be was a criminal. It made me want to be anything but one. When you know that you can get away with any crime, it becomes a matter of self-respect to commit none. When there is no one to force you to stay within the norms of the society, self-control becomes all that stands between you and the person you want to be.

~ Marina Simcoe

How many times has our conscience firmly prompted us to ‘draw the line,’ and we showed up with an eraser?

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

If he makes himself as good as he tells others to be, then he in truth can teach others. Difficult indeed is self-control.

~ Anonymous

Maturity is the ability to make a decision and stand by it.

~ Auliq Ice

It takes more to abstain than to err, more to avoid mistakes than to make mistakes; but the good thing is that it gets better with practice.

~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Truth: last week I online shopped too much. Then I ate 2 pounds of jelly beans to feel better about that. In fact, while I was trying to read soul-nourishing things all I could think about was shopping and jellybeans. Points to the monkey mind.

~ Anna White

It took him (Washington) more than a year to gain control over his own aggressive instincts.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

If you do not acquire good training in detachment, you may attach to all the wrong things.

~ Richard Rohr

An animal will conquer others. A Spirit-filled man conquers himself – self-discipline, self-control.

~ Mark Driscoll

With your thoughts, emotions, and beliefs under control, you can have as much as the richest man and be as peaceful as a Buddhist monk . You can experience inner-happiness and euphoric love.

~ Maddy Malhotra

The only thing you have 100 percent control over is you.

~ Hyrum W. Smith

You are in control of your life, when you refuse to be provoke.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.

~ N.t. Wright

Perfectionism is the unparalleled defense for emotionally abandoned children. The existential unattainability of perfection saves the child from giving up, unless or until, scant success forces him to retreat into the depression of a dissociative disorder, or launches him hyperactively into an incipient conduct disorder. Perfectionism also provides a sense of meaning and direction for the powerless and unsupported child. In the guise of self-control, striving to be perfect offers a simulacrum of a sense of control. Self-control is also safer to pursue because abandoning parents typically reserve their severest punishment for children who are vocal about their negligence.

~ Pete Walker

I shouldn't have spoken like that.''People do, sometimes. People who've had less to contend with than you. We're not always in full control of our actions.

~ M.l. Stedman

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

There is a difference between what you want, and what you need.

~ Abhijit Naskar

Selfish needs, wants, and desires needed to be obliterated. Greed, overindulgence, and gluttony had to be expunged from human behavior. The solution was in self-control, in minimalism, in sparse living conditions; one simple and a brand-new dictionary filled with words everyone would understand.

~ Tahereh Mafi

The awkwardness of getting reward in a well-off society is that the creation of appetite often requires undoing the work of satisfying appetite.

~ George Ainslie

Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.

~ Criss Jami

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Dreaming was easier than screaming, and screaming was easier than worrying, and worrying was easier than crying, which was what she knew she would be reduced to if she didn’t keep a hard eye on herself.

~ Kevin Brockmeier

she had something I could not have, and so I resented her—but I realized the fault was mine and not hers.

~ Sharon Shinn

Contemporaries of Alexander Hamilton noticed his conspicuous sense of self-possession, his unique combination of serenity and energy.

~ Joseph J. Ellis

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control. They are the source of inspiration, my insurance against becoming entirely unacceptable. They help me do the right thing. And I am terrified of what I would be without them. Because I suspect that, left to my own devices, I would completely lose control of my life.

~ Allie Brosh

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self-contained in their daily lives.

~ Thomas Hardy

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

A credit card allows you transcend time. For it allows you to put off until tomorrow what you bought today, while you are still paying what you bought yesterday.

~ Robert Morrissette

A credit card allows you transcend time. For it allows you to put off until tomorrow what you bought today, while you are still paying off what you bought yesterday.

~ Robert Morrissette

Freedom like charity, begins at home. No man is worthy to fight in the cause of freedom unless he has conquered his internal masters. He must learn control and discipline over the disastrous passions that would lead him to folly and ruin. He must conquer inordinate vanity and anger, self-deception, fear, and inhibition.

~ Jack Whiteside Parsons

I would have done anything for him. But these days, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to get drunk or go to a wild party or make out with random boys-not that I've ever wanted to. I don't want to watch chick flicks or eat ice cream or get a haircut or buy out half of the mall. I don't want cold, cruel revenge. I don't want to see him suffer when karma catches up with him and kick his ass. I don't even want to talk to him right now, simply because it would be awkward and pathetic and I wouldn't know what to say to him. Yes, there is self-control, preventing me from being stupid and acting like a desperate doofus in the manner most heartbroken people do. But there is also a weary numbness threatening to consume every inch of me: Isn't there a way for me to skip straight to the part where I'm fine again?

~ Marla Miniano

Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

The fact that rape threats are a thing says a lot about how rape isn't a lapse in self-control but often a tool to punish & control others.

~ Steph Guthrie

All around the Mediterranean you'll find cultures that believe men can't control themselves and shouldn't have to try.

~ Sheri S. Tepper

[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

Be at peace with yourself, or you'll be at war with everyone.

~ Raheel Farooq