Mastery Quotes

• Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.

  Robert Greene

  Focus, Genius, Fields

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.263, Profile Books

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• Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

  Albert Einstein

  Love, Inspirational, Life

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives”, p.78, Princeton University Press

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• If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

  Bruce Lee

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

  Will Durant

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• Self-disciplined begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don't control what you think, you can't control what you do. Simply, self-discipline enables you to think first and act afterward.

  Napoleon Hill

  Motivational, Change, Bad Ass

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• If you knew how much work went into it, you wouldn't call it genius.

  Michelangelo

  Inspirational, Genius, Inspiring Career

  As quoted in "Speeches & Presentations Unzipped" by Lori Rozakis, (p. 71), 2007.

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• Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.

  Bruce Lee

  Inspirational, Life, Confidence

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• I am, indeed, a king, because I know how to rule myself.

  Pietro Aretino

  Motivational, Kings, Responsibility

  Pietro Aretino (1926). “The Works of Aretino: Biography: de Sanctis. The letters. The sonnets. Appendix”

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• A successful career will no longer be about promotion. It will be about mastery.

  Michael Martin Hammer

  Successful, Careers, Discipline

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• Every artist was first an amateur.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Inspirational, Motivational, Inspiring

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume VIII: Letters and Social Aims”, p.119, Harvard University Press

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• Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.

  Robert Greene

  Later In Life, Envy, Focus

  Robert Greene (2012). “Mastery”, p.56, Profile Books

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• Willpower is the key to success. Successful people strive no matter what they feel by applying their will to overcome apathy, doubt or fear.

  Dan Millman

  Inspirational, Motivational, Fear

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• A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

  Helen Keller

  Inspirational, Happiness, Being Happy

  Helen Keller (2011). “To Live, to Think, to Hope: Inspirational Quotes by Helen Keller”, p.153, Matthew Gordon

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• Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

  Mark Twain

  Courage, Fear, Cancer

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• You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself.

  Jim Whittaker

  Motivational, Discipline, Mountain

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• We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.

  George A. Sheehan

  Motivational, Recovery, Thinking

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• Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Vocabulary, Mind, Syntax

  Spectator 19 Nov. 1937 "The Psychology of Advertising"

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• The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Nature, Self, Environmental

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• Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

  Bruce Lee

  Motivational, Philosophical, Judging

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• To know oneself is to study oneself in action, which is relationship.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Awakening, Action

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2013). “The first and last freedom”, p.48, Rajpal & Sons

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• A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!

  Annie Dillard

  Work, Doors, Discipline

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  Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

  Mark Twain

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Pudd'nhead Wilson ch. 12, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (1894)

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• Of my own spirit let me be in sole though feeble mastery.

  Sara Teasdale

  Spirit, Sole, Let Me

  Sara Teasdale (1937). “Collected poems”

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• The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery

  Thorstein Veblen

  Dog, Play, Favors

  Thorstein Veblen (1993). “A Veblen Treasury: From Leisure Class to War, Peace, and Capitalism”, p.77, M.E. Sharpe

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• If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.

  Bruce Lee

  Moving, Echoes, Mirrors

  Bruce Lee (2015). “Bruce Lee Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living”, p.13, Tuttle Publishing

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