"Self-discipline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exercise of their powers; a valuable compensation, in part, for their more limited share of the advantage that one part of knowledge becomes more valuable in itself by the accession of many others. Let them persevere in this worthy self-discipline, appropriate to the introductory period of an endless mental life. Let them go on to complete the proof how much a mind incited to a high purpose may triumph over a depression of its external condition;—but solemnly ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... literary language. It took him long to get rid of the old-fashioned soliloquy and aside. In his very last works, however, in Sor Simona and Santa Juana de Castilla, as in the novels El caballero encantado and La razn de la sinrazn, Galds, through severe self-discipline, attained a fluidity and chastity of style which place him among the most distinguished masters of ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... since it has dawned upon our minds that adult members of a family need not necessarily live together if they prefer to live apart, the strain of domesticity has been reduced to the limits of endurance. We have gained in serenity what we have lost in self-discipline by this easy achievement of an independence which, fifty years ago, would have been deemed pure licence. I can remember that, when I was a little girl, two of our neighbours, a widowed mother and a widowed daughter, scandalized ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... scourged themselves, it was not their habit to appear half naked before a crowd of women; that our Lord Himself had not of His own accord taken off His garments for the scourger; that saints who scourged themselves had, as a general rule, chosen a private place for their self-discipline. This was quite reasonable, but the advice was little to the taste of the recipient, who hated ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... outstanding and obvious facts. Firstly, science cannot be the whole of knowledge, because "science" (in his limited sense of the term) deals only with what appears. Secondly, power of insight depends not so much upon the senses as on moral qualities, the sense of sympathy and of fairness; it needs self-discipline as well as knowledge both of oneself and one's fellow-man. "How can a man," says Carlyle, "without clear vision in his heart first of all, have any clear vision in the head?" "Eyes and ears," said the ancient philosopher, "are bad witnesses for such as have barbarian souls." ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... of that first hour after the disaster of the river, Lounsbury and Vosper had a chance to test the steel of which they were made. This was the time for inner strength, and courage, and beyond all things else, for self-discipline. But only the forest creatures, such little folk as watch with beady eyes from the coverts all the drama of the wilderness, beheld how they ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... was still leaner than she had known it, and there were deep lines about the mouth—graven. And the mouth itself held something sternly sweet and austere about the manner of its closing—a severity of self-discipline which one might look to see on the lips of a man who has made the supreme sacrifice of his own will, bludgeoning his desires into submission in response to some ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... yet unable to do without religion, he set down the list of virtues which he thought might be of benefit to himself and at the same time of service to his fellows; qualities which all the sects might unite in proclaiming good, and which any man might easily acquire by a little persistence in self-discipline. Aiming to become himself "completely virtuous," he dreamed of some day formulating the universal principles of the "Art of Virtue," and of uniting all good men throughout the world in a society for promoting the practice of it. And what was this Art of Virtue but a socialized religion ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... into their unwilling souls. It may be lamentable that humanity should still be held so firmly in the grip of biologic law that it must kill and be killed in order to save itself, but there are things worse than death. Until humanity learns the secret of self-discipline it will create diseases that can be eradicated only with the knife; it is merely blind to assume that the insanity of war can be prevented by any system of parliamenting, or litigation, or paper schemes of international arbitration. Some issues are of a primary importance, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... House of Commons until he should be promoted to the woolsack; beyond all, with a social status that should place him above the scuffle of provincial and unprofessional annoyances; but he forced himself to take life as it came, and he suffocated his longings with grim self-discipline, by mere force of will. Of the four men, Dana was the most marked. Without dogmatism or self-assertion, he seemed always to be fully in sight, a figure that completely filled a well-defined space. He, too, talked well, and his mind worked ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... deprivations, the lack of opportunities, the meagre education, which you had on the old farm. But you have put a crutch into his hand instead of a staff; you have taken away from him the incentive to self-development, to self-elevation, to self-discipline and self-help, without which no real success, no real happiness, no great character is ever possible. His enthusiasm will evaporate, his energy will be dissipated, his ambition, not being stimulated by the struggle for self-elevation, will gradually die away. If you do everything for ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... evolution he will simply tell the people whatever may have been given him in the same hour to say. This does not mean that indolence will supersede industry. Through the indolent man God sends no messages. The true prophet will always be preparing himself. By learning, by meditation, by self-discipline, the true prophet will prepare his heart for the incoming of the Eternal Spirit, and the glory of Heaven will be as a fire on the altar of the honest heart. Art preachers we have had in too great abundance. Mechanical talkers have brought ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... take place in the moral world. Ethical salvation could not be conferred through such a substitution, even if this could take place. Still, the conception of the vicarious suffering of Christ may be taken as a symbolical expression of the idea that in the pain of self-discipline, of obedience and patience, the new man in us suffers, as it were vicariously, for the old. The atonement is a continual ethical process in the heart of the religious man. It is a grave defect of Kant's religious philosophy, that it was so absolutely individualistic. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... down Paul's ruling principle, which both impelled him to become all things to all men, with a view to their salvation, as he has been saying, and urged him to effort and self-discipline, with a view to his own, as he goes on to say. 'For the Gospel's sake' seems to point backward; 'that I may be a joint partaker thereof points forward. We have not only to preach the Gospel to others, but to live on it and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... her about it. Was she not his sister?—his confidant for all his childhood?—and why should he shut up his heart from her now? But then she must guard herself from being jealous,—that would be mean and wicked. So Mara, in her zeal of self-discipline, pushed on matters; invited Sally to tea to meet Moses; and when she came, left them alone together while she busied herself in hospitable cares. She sent Moses with errands and commissions to Sally, which he was sure to improve into protracted ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... if to carry out his resolve: but at the last, shut down the flood-gates of emotion, fell back on years of self-discipline, and told his heart he was a fool. He had yet to learn that there is a folly worth more than all the wisdom of philosophers, the folly of a man who loves a woman better than ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... read upstairs; there's the sound of a steady hum. Yes, it's Sunday today, and she, being the best educated of them, naturally reads the service. Bravo! Magnificent! She has extended her self-discipline even to this, for they are all orthodox Christians in this neighborhood. Believing? No, but not hostile, either. One reads Scripture. Rather a clever ruse, ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... importance of this faculty are considered in the first three chapters. In the fourth and fifth is described the preliminary training of attention necessary for its use; in the sixth, the general self-discipline and attitude toward life which it involves. The seventh, eighth, and ninth chapters treat in an elementary way of the three great forms of contemplation; and in the tenth, the practical value of the life in which they have been actualised is examined. Those kind enough to attempt the perusal ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... high above the neighbouring trees. So he made straight for it at once. Amos was no coward, though naturally of a timid disposition; for he had patiently acquired habits of self-control, learned partly in the school of chastisement, and partly in the school of self-discipline. And yet it was not without a feeling of shrinking and misgiving that he saw a man approaching the oak from a path opposite to that by which he himself had come. Trees, mingled with thick brushwood, covered the ground on all sides, except where the roads and bridle-paths ran, and ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... maintains, in his charming work, "The Oriental Christ," that "the height of self-denial may fitly be called asceticism," he is at the same time fully alive to its dangerous exaggerations. "Pride," he says, "creeps into the holiest and humblest exercises of self-discipline. It is the supremest natures only that escape. The practice of asceticism therefore is always attended with great danger." The language of Mozoomdar, however, like that of many Christian monastic writers, opens the door to many grave excesses. It is another evidence ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... religious life is personal communion with Him, the intuitive apprehension and spontaneous acceptance of His will, the Beatific Vision of His excellencies. But this state of blessedness cannot be reached by mere self-discipline; the prayers, the meditations, the good works of the isolated and uninstructed individual, can only serve to condone a state of irremediable ignorance. The avenue to knowledge of Him lies through faith; and faith means the unquestioning acceptance of the twofold revelation of Himself which He has ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... private expeditions, and this was another and final disgrace which the cowman perceived and commented upon. To assist an old libertine like the major in concealing his night journeys was the nethermost deep of "self-discipline," but when the pretty young wife of his employer became the object of the major's attention Kelley was ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... school course lasting four years and the secondary course four years more, and leading the boys and girls up to the study of benevolence, their duty to ancestors, to other people's property, other people's honor, other people's freedom, and, finally, to self-discipline, modesty, dignity, dress, labor, the treatment of animals, and the due relations of men and women, both of whom are to be regarded equally as "lords" of creation. From end to end of the long course of training, behavior rather than knowledge is insisted upon, even down to ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... this was a self-discipline in the two great knowledges by which men have climbed from savages to gods—language and mathematics. He was told one day that there was an English grammar in a house six miles from his home, and he at once walked off ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... such as public religion, assumes protection of the most searching social maxims and lends to them the weight of all time, all space, all wonder, and all fear. For many centuries religion held within itself the ripening self-knowledge and self-discipline of the human mind. Now, beside this original agency we have its offshoots, politics, education, legislation, the penal art. And the philosophical sciences, including psychology and ethics, are the ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... any influences that he might bring. He could remember the time when she was a fair and gentle young girl, with her will all subject to his; then a loving bride with no thought apart from him; but now years of suffering and self-discipline had transformed her to this, and she came back to him an ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... tragedy of his life. It is as depressing as one of his own morbid, fantastic tales. His career leaves a painful sense of incompleteness and loss. With greater self-discipline, how much more he might have accomplished for himself and for others! Gifted, self-willed, proud, passionate, with meager moral sense, he forfeited success by his perversity and his vices. From his own character and experience he drew the unhealthy and pessimistic views to which he has given expression ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... even the less brutal blows administered by undisciplined teachers and parents, who avenge themselves in excesses of passion or fatigue or disgust,—blows which are simply the active expression of a tension of nerves, a detestable evidence of the want of self-discipline and selfculture. Still less do I refer to the cruelties committed by monsters, sexual perverts, whose brutal tendencies are stimulated by their disciplinary power and who use it to force their victims to silence, as certain criminal ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... recesses of the choir, and the surprise and dishonor this unexpected denouement brought upon the home were nothing to the unhappiness in store for the childish bride, whose latest and wildest freak brought neither wisdom for self-discipline nor power to endure that relentless criticism which ceased only when a little one lay in the place of the child-mother, who had been too weak to cope with the worries of the year that had followed upon that unhappy day in ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... produce a higher manhood, to realise which there is need for sacrifice and courage. Nietzsche is the spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenics. The Superman is not born, he is bred. Our passions must be our servants. Obedience and fidelity, self-discipline and courage are the virtues upon which he insists. 'Be master of life. . . .' 'I call you to a new nobility. Ye shall become the procreators and ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... Commencement of 1924, the University of Cincinnati bestowed upon Mr. Nelson the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, "as one who has ever striven to advance the government of the mind and spirit, and who by his own severe self-discipline and true humility has taught all of us to subdue ourselves to the imperishable laws ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... rule physical vigor is the condition of a great career. Stonewall Jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. He held all of his powers with a firm hand. To his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. So determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "I will not give in to the cold," he said. For a ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... to trouble and keep your grin, But have you tackled self-discipline? Have you ever issued commands to you To quit the things that you like to do, And then, when tempted and sorely swayed, Those rigid ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by all, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden rule—"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you." Therefore we ask that the question of equality of rights to women shall be arbitrated upon by the picked men of the nation in ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... the second son of the fat Earl of Avondale, won the prize, worsting his elder brother William in the final encounter. The victor was a nobly formed youth, of strength and stature greater than those of his brother, but without William of Avondale's haughty spirit and stern self-discipline. ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... at least on amiable terms must be held as much as could be hoped for. With regard to Mary's efficiency as a teacher, his opinion had grown more favourable since he had seen her in her own home. Time and experience were moulding her, he thought, to a task undertaken first of all in a spirit of self-discipline. She appeared to be successful in winning the confidence of parents, and she no longer complained of inability to make herself liked by her little pupils. Best of all, she was undoubtedly devoting herself to the work with all the powers of her mind, ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... defence against barbarism, the work of the non-ethical man. This debt we are bound to repay by furthering in ourselves the good work of human fellowship, and by striving to improve the conditions of our social life; and the means thereto are self-discipline, self-support, intelligent effort, not unreasoning violence with its disruption of the defences against ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... background, engaged in no more terrific act of violence toward St. Anthony, than endeavoring to pull off his mantle; he has, however, a scourge over his shoulder, but this is probably intended for St. Anthony's weapon of self-discipline, which the fiend, with a very Protestant turn of mind, is carrying off. A broken staff, with a bell hanging to it, at the saint's feet, also expresses his interrupted devotion. The three other figures beside him are bent on more cunning ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin |
