Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul
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The birth of the new constitutes a crisis, and its mastery calls for a crude and simple cast of mind -- the mind of a fighter -- in which the virtues of tribal cohesion and fierceness and infantile credulity and malleability are paramount. Thus every new beginning recapitulates in some degree man's first beginning.
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The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear--not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward, it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the flea!--incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson, and Putnam as men who didn't know what fear was, we ought always to add the flea--and put him at the head of the procession.
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We always compare our labor with its results. We do not devote more effort to a given task if we can accomplish it with less; nor, when confronted with two toilsome tasks, do we choose the greater. We are more inclined to diminish the ratio of effort to result, and if, in so doing, we gain a little leisure, nothing will stop us from using it, for the sake of additional benefits, in enterprises more in keeping with our tastes. Man's universal practice, indeed, is conclusive in this regard. Always and everywhere, we find that he looks upon toil as the disagreeable aspect, and on satisfaction as the compensatory aspect, of his condition. Always and everywhere, we find that, as far as he is able, he places the burden of his toil upon animals, the wind, steam, or other forces of Nature, or, alas! upon his fellow men, if he can gain mastery over them. In this last case, let me repeat, for it is too often forgotten, the labor has not been lessened; it has merely been shifted to other shoulders.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.
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Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life - in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.
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Order and simplification are the first steps towards the mastery of a subject.
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Technical skill is mastery of complexity, while creativity is mastery of simplicity.
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We achieve active mastery over illness and death by delegating all responsibility for their management to physicians, and by exiling the sick and the dying to hospitals. But hospitals serve the convenience of staff not patients: we cannot be properly ill in a hospital, nor die in one decently; we can do so only among those who love and value us. The result is the institutionalized dehumanization of the ill, characteristic of our age.
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People in places many of us never heard of, whose names we can't pronounce or even spell, are speaking up for themselves. They speak in languages we once classified as exotic but whose mastery is now essential for our diplomats and businessmen. But what they say is very much the same the world over. They want a decent standard of living. They want human dignity and a voice in their own futures. They want their children to grow up strong and healthy and free.
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My mind has touched the farthest horizons of mental imagination and reaches ever outward to embrace infinity. There is no knowledge beyond my comprehension, no art or skill upon this entire planet that lies beyond the mastery of my hand... But as long as I live, no woman will ever look on me in love.
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Modern Man is the victim of the very instruments he values most. Every gain in power, every mastery of natural forces, every scientific addition to knowledge, has proved potentially dangerous, because it has not been accompanied by equal gains in self-understanding and self-discipline.
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Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.
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When force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, lose no time in recovering your self-control, and do not remain out of tune longer than you can help. Habitual recurrence to the harmony will increase your mastery of it.
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Many people make the mistake of thinking that all the challenges in their lives would dissipate if they just had enough money. Nothing could be further from the truth. Earning more money, in and of itself, rarely frees people. It's equally ridiculous to tell yourself that greater financial freedom and mastery of your finances would not offer your greater opportunities to expand, share, and create value for yourself and others.
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I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship.
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It is marvellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland.
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If people only knew how hard I work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
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Through his mastery of storytelling techniques, he has managed to separate his character, in the public mind, from his actions as president. ... He has, in short, mesmerized us with that steady gaze.
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Substantive abandonment of convention is evidence of mastery.
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Over-seriousness is a warning sign for mediocrity and bureaucratic thinking. People who are seriously committed to mastery and high performance are secure enough to lighten up.
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Give a boy address and accomplishments and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes where he goes.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear-not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.
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Do not fall prey to the false belief that mastery and domination are synonymous with manliness.
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Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.
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Gather in your resources, rally all your faculties, marshal all your energies, focus all your capacities upon mastery of at least one field of endeavor.
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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.
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If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
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