Quotes about Willpower

Faith without action is delusion. Faith does not wait for miracles but produces them. If you think you can or if you think you can't, you are right.

I'm the most stubborn person I know.

Nothing can withstand the power of the human will if it is willing to stake its very existence to the extent of its purpose.

Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness.

We too can love with the will even when we do not have loving emotions or feelings. We make this distinction toward ourselves quite easily, so we should be able to do it toward others too when necessary.

God's Spirit is most powerfully at work in us during emotional troughs, the "dry" times, not the "high" times. All the saints teach that. When the aid of feelings is removed, we can move forward only by heroic effort of our will. This

Your will, not mine, O Lord.

if it happens that the soul is attached or inclined to a thing inordinately, that one should move himself, putting forth all his strength, to come to the contrary of what he is wrongly drawn to.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.

Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart" "It is not my ability, but my response to God's ability that counts." "Let God's promises shine on your problems." "Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.

There you are. A simple commandment. Not ten of them, just one: 'Thou shalt not eat.' (Personally, I wish the very first edict from God hadn't involved dieting, don't you?)

He who would be useful, strong, and happy must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggarly, and impure streams of thought; and as a wise householder commands his servants and invites his guests, so must he learn to command his desires and to say, with authority, what thoughts he shall admit into the mansion of his soul.