"Self-discipline" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say no more than he has warranty for, without clearly marking off so much as is hypothetical—is far heavier than if he were dealing with experts, he will find his task a very admirable mental exercise. For my own part, I am inclined to doubt whether there is any method of self-discipline better calculated to clear up one's own ideas about a difficult subject, than that which arises out of the effort to put them forth, with fulness and precision, in language which all the world can understand. Sheridan is said to have replied to some one who remarked on the easy flow ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... from year to year, the elementary 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 tiniest ...
— The Girl Wanted • Nixon Waterman
... discipline is to be found in doing what is uninteresting; and that interest is to be found in doing what is "slack." This is very bad psychology. For we aim at training willing servants, fit to become masters, not slaves fit for nothing but slavery. The only valuable discipline is self-discipline, and self-discipline will only be reached when the boy has realised for himself that the work is intrinsically worth doing, and when he has realised that he will have become interested. Again, what is interesting must be absorbing, and such work can never be "slack." ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... and clearer and stronger we can make our thinking, by dint of self-discipline, the greater power have we with other men. The purer the heart, the loftier the practical ideals that control the personal habits, the greater is ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... vigorous self-discipline so to cultivate the feelings of kindness and sympathy that they are always in readiness for use. These qualities are essential to agreeable and profitable intercourse, though comparatively few ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Self-discipline and self-control are the beginnings of practical wisdom; and these must have their root in self-respect. Hope springs from it—hope, which is the companion of power, and the mother of success; for whoso hopes strongly has within ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we only don't strike the blow or ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... superior quality. Tactless laughter at his own wit, jests that have a sting of idle gossip, are to be avoided. Reproof is to be given not in anger but in a sweet and mild temper. The rules descend even to manners at table and are a revelation of care in self-discipline. We might imagine Oliver Cromwell drawing up such rules, ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... person who refuses to play the game of marriage, just as soon as it appears that complete fulfillment of youthful wishes is not to be had, cannot grow up and never comes to see that the greater satisfactions must come out of self-discipline, emotional restraint, and a love of response that does not ask what is beyond human achievement. Not through a bringing to life of his rosy dreams of contentment, but in a fellowship that deepens through the maturing ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... 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. Had he realised more ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... the city. At the 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
... a little rule of self-discipline which deserved to be, and was, its own reward. If ever personal troubles began to worry her she diligently bent her thoughts upon someone for whose welfare she was anxious, and whom she might possibly ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... left school, as was inevitable, her self-discipline was irksome enough at times, and some of the details she shirked; but not for long, because the time which accustomed duties should have occupied hung heavy on her hands, and she felt dissatisfied with herself rather than relieved when she neglected them. So ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... which are performed with a certain difficulty, under the sense of responsibility to duty, under the self-discipline of right principle; by qualities, I mean what is spontaneous. Constitutional good qualities are spontaneous. Such as natural sweetness of temper—natural delicacy of feeling—natural intrepidity; others are the result of habit, and end by ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... and to secure ease and excellence in the working of their delicate mechanism much practice is necessary. The pupil should persistently read aloud. A practice of this sort, watchfully pursued, with a reasonable degree of self-discipline in the correction or avoidance of errors, is helpful not alone in obtaining a mastery of the reading art, and in mental culture,—it is equally beneficial as a physical exercise. It will, however, be much more ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... the object worthy of the price. But ever and anon, he seemed to be close on what he was searching for, and certain to secure it by just a little further effort; while as often, like the cup of Tantalus, it was snatched from his grasp. Moreover, during a life-time of splendid self-discipline, he had been training himself to keep his promises, and to complete his tasks; nor could he in any way see it his duty to break the one or leave the other unfinished. He had undertaken to the Geographical Society to solve that problem, and he would do it if it ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... broke out, and the fifteen years between forty-five and sixty tell sorely upon the physical stamina which need to underlie the mental and moral forces of a great commander. St. Vincent himself staggered under the load, and Rodney was not a St. Vincent in the stern self-discipline that had braced the latter for old age. He had not borne the yoke in his youth, and from this time forward he fought a losing fight with money troubles, which his self-controlled contemporary, after one bitter experience, had shaken off ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... let me remind you, gentlemen, that woman has not been a heedless spectator of all the great events of the century, nor a dull listener to the grand debates on human freedom and equality. She has learned the lesson of self-sacrifice, self-discipline, and self-government in the same school with the heroes of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... 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 ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... not self-immolation. To jump off London Bridge would be self-immolation, but it would not be an act conducive to the welfare of the community; it might indeed be a very selfish and cowardly act. True morality involves the duty of self-formation and the exercise of judgment and self-discipline in order that the individual life may become as great a gift as possible to the common life. It will therefore be seen at once that there is a vital relation between morality and religion; the one implies the other even though the ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... 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 ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... blunder to go about such a thing without making success his first care. This, accordingly, is what he works for, being reckless of all other considerations in his choice and use of means. Withal he is more impulsive and quick than Brutus, because less under the self-discipline of moral principle. His motives, too, are of a much more mixed and various quality, because his habits of thinking and acting have grown by the measures of experience; he studies to understand men as they are; Brutus, as he thinks they ought to ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... dread of dirt, of sharp instruments, of certain insects and animals, of darkness, of an ocean voyage, and of great heights, are common examples of this type of mind-distress of which the characteristic symptom is an inexplicable and uncontrollable dread. The same system of self-discipline and self-control is necessary to effect a cure of these various forms of mind-distress as is necessary in the successful treatment of dread of disease. To none of these other forms, however, is attached the same degree of seriousness by the laity ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... ideal of the married woman, but her saintliness interfered with her other duties, and even her own time does not seem to have been sure in its judgment of her. That she was flogged is a fact which has many relations to her character and her age.[428] All admired men who practiced asceticism and self-discipline. The types of the age were knightliness and saintliness. They were both highly elaborated. The knightly type began to develop in the time of Charlemagne and ran through the crusades. It contained grotesque and absurd elements. The story of the crusades is a criticism ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... straight to the point. If any came expecting the turgid eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier, they must have been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his utterances. It was marvellous to see how this untutored man, by mere self-discipline and the chastening of his own spirit, had outgrown all meretricious arts, and found his own way to the grandeur ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... constant control over his thoughts, his speech, and his acts. Nine-tenths of the vicious desires that degrade society, and which, when indulged, swell into the crimes that disgrace it, would shrink into insignificance before the advance of valiant self-discipline, self-respect, and self-control. By the watchful exercise of these virtues, purity of heart and mind become habitual, and the character is built up ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... be nice to report that he went at it with determination, self-discipline, and system, following instructions to the letter and ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... an opportunity for escape from the querulousness and the vagueness which had become poetic habits among English poets and lovers of poetry. I say the "Kipling epoch," for Mr. Kipling himself never had the self-discipline, perhaps had not the sense of form, to achieve much durable poetry, and his very masculinity turned at last into an unmasculine shriek. He marked no more than the transition period. Mr. Chesterton is a part of it. He, too, is lacking in sense ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... that Mr. Tennyson can make available, it is a great proof of self-discipline that he is not given to a wanton or tyrannous use of it. An extraordinary master of diction, he has confined himself to its severe and simple forms. In establishing this rule of practice his natural gift has evidently been aided by the fine English ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... thinking to ask you. I was declaring a six months' course in self-discipline for the ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... of the 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 close to ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... being is the greatest of all sins against His majesty. The goal of the 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 ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... opportunities, the meager 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 ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... unsublimated active life. This is the controlling idea of the hermit and recluse. It is well seen in St. Teresa; whom her biographers describe as torn, for years, between the interests of human intercourse and the imperative inner voice urging her to solitary self-discipline and prayer. So we may say that in the beginning of the life of the Spirit, as history shows it to us, if disillusion marks the first moment, some measure of asceticism, of world-refusal and painful self-schooling, is likely ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... sympathize with the Bishop in his resistance to Rome, and at the crisis of the contest he offered him his own support and that of his associates. But Robert passed away, and as the tide of misgovernment mounted higher and higher the Earl silently trained himself for the day of trial. The fruit of his self-discipline was seen when the crisis came. While other men wavered and faltered and fell away, the enthusiastic love of the people clung to the grave, stern soldier who "stood like a pillar," unshaken by promise or threat or fear of death, by the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... genuine; in Stephen's estimation his friend had noble qualities, and in bearing testimony to them he was beginning his chapter of self-discipline. In this interview, at least, he had preserved a conscience void of offense, and he hastened to say goodnight before any temptation should assail his discretion. Perhaps, also—for he was but mortal—the reflection in the parlor mirror of what was passing in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... the days of childhood when growth is most rapid and vigorous, intrinsically attractive. Had she done otherwise she would have failed to make due provision for the growth of Man's being during the years which precede the outgrowth of self-consciousness, and the possibility of self-discipline, of the narrower ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... characteristic, of a rational mind to distinguish degrees of certainty, and to hold each judgment with the degree of confidence that it deserves, considering the evidence for and against it. It takes a long time, and much self-discipline, to make some progress toward rationality; for there are many causes of belief that are not good grounds for it—have no value as evidence. Evidence consists of (1) observation; (2) reasoning checked by observation and by logical principles; (3) memory—often inaccurate; (4) testimony—often ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... of ill-health rendered her often sentimental, high-strung, and even hysterical. She has in her the impulses and material of great poetry, but circumstances and her temperament combined to deny her the patient self-discipline necessary for the best results. She writes vehemently to assert the often-neglected rights of women and children or to denounce negro slavery and all oppression; and sometimes, as when in 'The Cry of the Children' she revealed the ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... into hysterics", are merely grown-up "spoiled children", and in all cases, the basic factor is a lack of control and self-discipline. ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... than a certain emphasizing of what had been before only latent and foreshadowed. The lean face 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 ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... Franciscan Order, Mr Adderley opens his narrative with an admirable sketch of the history of Monasticism in Europe, which is certainly the best thing in the book. He distinguishes clearly and fairly between the Manichaean ideal that underlies so much of Eastern Monasticism and the ideal of self-discipline which never wholly vanished from the Christian form. But he does not throw any light on what must be for the outsider the absorbing problem of this Catholic asceticism, for the excellent reason that not being an outsider he does not find it a problem ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... after the submission of the clergy he resigned the great seal. He could not long avoid further offence to his master, and his refusal to take the oath of supremacy was the crime for which he was condemned. His behaviour during his last days and on the scaffold was perfect. He spent his time in severe self-discipline; he uttered eloquent words of forgiveness of his enemies, messages of love to the daughter whom he tenderly loved, and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... grandiloquent to tell the workingmen of the world to unite, that they had "nothing but their chains to lose and the world to gain." Cohesion of any sort, united and voluntary organization, as events have proved, is impossible in populations bereft of intelligence, self-discipline and even the material necessities of life, and cheated by their desires and ignorance into unrestrained ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... any sense of the word a bad woman. She was merely beautiful and irresponsible—a typical cigale of the stage—lovable and kind-hearted and pagan, and possessing but the haziest notions of self-control and self-discipline. Even so, left to themselves, husband and wife might ultimately have found the road to happiness across the bridge of their great love for ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... 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 year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived ...
— An Iron Will • Orison Swett Marden
... only in his conduct gave some handle for scandal, among the just persons who needed no repentance. It was well known that in his most solemn devotions, on those long nights of unceasing prayer and self-discipline, which won him a reputation for superhuman sanctity, there mingled always with his prayers the names of two women. And, when some worthy elder, taking courage from his years, dared to hint kindly to him that such conduct caused some scandal ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... middle age, to occasional sudden bursts of uncontrollable anger, generally followed by periods of black depression and almost absolute silence,[44] Baker was the very reverse. Partly by natural temperament, but also certainly by severe self-discipline, his manner was invincibly placid and his temper imperturbable.[45] Yet none was more tenacious in maintaining ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... whole his courage. All their hopes and joys were indeed centred in the education of the little Ferdinand. At ten years of age he was one of those spirited and at the same time docile boys, who seem to combine with the wild and careless grace of childhood the thoughtfulness and self-discipline of maturer age. It was the constant and truthful boast of his parents, that, in spite of all his liveliness, he had never in the whole course of his life disobeyed them. In the village, where he was idolised, they called him ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... verbal or substantial. But every line that I write passes a gauntlet of objections by every one of my colleagues, which finally issues, for the most part, in the rejection of it all." He reflects, with a somewhat forced air of self-discipline, that this must indicate some faultiness in his composition which he must try to correct; but in fact it is sufficiently evident that he was seldom persuaded that his papers were improved. Amid all this we see ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse |
