348 Quotes About Self-control

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself

You can control yourself if you really want to. I'll tell you how I know you can control yourself. If you were in a full fledged emotional temper tantrum in your house and I knocked on your front door..... Come on! Let me tell you what, you would get control of yourself, and it would only take a few seconds.

Sometimes, you must refrain from doing things you want so bad.

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)

The basic idea here is that for most people will power is a limited resource: if we spend lots of energy controlling our impulses in one area, it becomes harder to control our impulses in others. Or, as the psychologist Roy Baumeister puts it, will power is like a muscle: overuse temporarily exhausts it.

Emotional content without self control burns the soul.Self control without emotional content is yet untested.

He wanted to take Homer Wells in his arms, and hug him, and kiss him, but he could only hope that Homer understood how much Dr. Larch's self-esteem was dependent on his self-control.

Are your thoughts getting in the way? Telling you all the reasons you can’t do something or making you feel like you don’t have a choice? Or urging you to tell others what jerks they are? Time for these thoughts to get out of the way. When you are Thoughtfully Fit, your thoughts can lead the way to better actions.

Self-regulation is highly valued. Even if we find them a bit tedious, we admire people who stick to an exercise regimen. We certainly value people who do not express every negative emotion they experience, those who are “low maintenance” because they can control their reactions to disappointment and insecurity. We can count on the self-controlled person to keep her promises because she will not be distracted in the course of so doing.