#mastery

Mastering the art of seduction gives one a great power, and like any power, it's to be wielded with responsibility; a man who wields the art of seduction without a sense of responsibility and restraint is a walking proximity bomb of viral epidemics, needless procreation, heartbroken families, and shattered dreams. ↗

— Mike Norton

#bomb #heartbreak #heartbroken #mastery #power

Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole? ↗

— Michel de Montaigne

#hubris #mankind #mastery #perspective #world

When your efforts run in the face of conventional wisdom and accepted mastery, persistence can look like madness. If you succeed in the end, this extreme originality reformulates into a new level of mastery, sometimes even genius; if you fail in the end, you remain a madman in the eyes of others, and maybe even yourself. When you are in the midst of the journey…there’s really no way of knowing which one you are.” (p.129) ↗

— Hilary Austen

#conventional-wisdom #effort #extreme-originality #genius #journey

We love the imperfect shapes in nature and in the works of art, look for an intentional error as a sign of the golden key and sincerity found in true mastery. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#dejan-stojanovic #golden #golden-rule #imperfect #imperfection

We should every night call ourselves to an account; What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#temptation

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself...the height of a man's success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. ...And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. ↗

— Leonardo da Vinci

#self-mastery #will-power #justice

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand; but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways. ↗

— Clarence Day

#fact #first #grand #her #mastery

Throughout the years I have tried to hone my skills to gain mastery over the music in my head. ↗

— Kip Winger

#head #hone #i #mastery #music

Mastery passes often for egotism. ↗

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

#mastery #often #passes

The great thing and the hard thing is to stick to thing when you have outlived the first interest and not yet the second which comes with a sort of mastery. ↗

— Janet Erskine Stuart

#first #great #great thing #hard #hard thing