Quotes about Self-control

It's not easy for me either, but if we allow anger to reside in us, we're more guilty than they are because we know the better way.

Listen to me, friend. Lay aside your pride or it will entangle you in sin. Anger is your worst enemy.

The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance." Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately. I could use a quiet retreat by myself. A

What was it St. Augustine said? she asked herself. "The mind commands the body and it obeys. The mind orders itself and meets resistance." Yes—I am meeting more resistance lately.

Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.

Feelings are indicators, not dictators. They can indicate where your heart is in the moment, but that doesn't mean they have the right to dictate your behavior and boss you around. You are more than the sum total of your feelings and perfectly capable of that little gift . . . called self-control.

For the opposite of sin is faith and never virtue, and we live in a world which believes that self-control can make us virtuous. But that's not how it works. How many men and women we have encountered, of great personal virtue and moral rectitude, convinced of their own righteousness, who have also been totally insensitive to the needs of others and sometimes downright cruel!

Austerity has always made me happy, and its opposite, miserable. I find it strange that, knowing this, I should so often have inflicted upon myself the nausea of over-indulgence, and had to fight off the black dogs of satiety. Human beings, as Pascal points out, are peculiar in that they avidly pursue ends they know will bring them no satisfaction; gorge themselves with food which cannot nourish and with pleasures which cannot please. I am a prize example.

For this is spiritual sobriety, when we use this world so sparingly and temperately that we are not entangled with its allurements.

when we are angered by the sins of   others, we should beware lest a temptation of an opposite kind should   take possession of our minds.

There is no greatness apart from self control. Development that does not include self government will only guarantee our mediocrity.

Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.