Quotes about Discipline

Knowing the rules of an art is not the same as having the habit.

Before you can achieve success in the higher and broader sense you must gain such thorough control over yourself that you will be a person of poise.

The best and most abiding success is that which is made before eight o'clock in the morning.

It is meaningless to pray in the morning and to live like a barbarian the remainder of the day. True prayer is a way of life; the truest life is literally a way of prayer.

Intemperance. The most damaging forms of intemperance are connected with eating, strong drink, and sexual activities. Overindulgence in any of these is fatal to success.

Men who control themselves usually boss the job, no matter what it may be.

When we're first learning sitting meditation, it can be useful to count our breaths. Count one for the first in- and out-breath. Count two for the second, and so on. If your mind wanders and you lose count, go back to one and begin again. This exercise helps develop concentration. You may think counting to ten is easy, but counting to ten while breathing mindfully takes a lot of focus.

We all worked, but we didn't work all day. There was time for us to study the sutras, practice writing, listen to the teachings given by our teacher, chant, and meditate. Most important was meditation. My teacher taught that meditation was the door to understanding, and the career of monks and nuns.

The liturgy is at one and the same time a daily discipline as "do-able" as walking to the corner or eating our lunch, and the entry into the highest mysteries of heaven.

Laziness and cowardice are two of the greatest enemies of the spiritual life.

Is it any wonder that there can be no peace in a world where everything possible is done to guarantee that the youth of every nation will grow up absolutely without moral and religious discipline, and without the shadow of an interior life, or of that spirituality and charity and faith which alone can safeguard the treaties and agreements made by governments?

Our five sense are dulled by inordinate pleasure. Penance makes them keen, gives them back their natural vitality, and more. Penance clears the eye of conscience and of reason.