Mastered Quotes

It is when we are incubating particularly awkward but potentially vital ideas that we tend to feel most desperate to avoid looking inside.
... we will have nothing substantial to offer anyone else so long as we have not first mastered the art of being patient midwives to our own thoughts.
We need long train journeys on which we have no wireless signal and nothing to read, where our carriage is mostly empty, where the views are expansive and where the only sounds are those made by the wheels as they click against the rails in rhythmical succession. ~ Alain De Botton

By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains where unable to cope with the volume of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it. ~ Bill Bryson

Recent studies have considered the detection of a spaceship visiting our parish of the galaxy. In my opinion that last thought should bring a blush to every human cheek ... Fecklessness might be the main theme of the aliens' report on the new-found source of radio pollution ... that emanates from beings who have mastered a lot of physics, chemistry and biology and yet let their children starve-while all around their planet the energy of their mother star runs to waste in a desert of space. ~ Nigel Calder

When I saw you I knew the universe had mastered my love language & I'd go through any amount of anguish to be a student of its genius. ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

I've evolved enough that I've learned to not subject others to the fallout of my own unhappiness. I think that's a significant, hard-won behavioral leap that, sadly, a staggering percent of the population of folks I know haven't quite mastered. ~ Keith Murray

We already have so much abundance. We truly do. We need not search too far. It is within. The reason we fail to recognize this is because we haven't quite mastered the art of being. For abundance to prevail, we must have LOVE, gratitude, acceptance and compassion. ~ John Welwood

In a certain sense, these were lessons I learned by playing with Indian musicians. The rhythmic forms that they use are very complex, and very challenging. In order to play in fifteen, or eleven, or seven or even five, you have to have mastered that time in order to be able to be free with the music. ~ John McLaughlin

Don't be upset," he whispered.
"I couldn't stop it from happening," she said in a plaintive voice.
"You weren't supposed to," he said tenderly. "I was playing with you. Teasing you."
"But I wanted it to last longer. It's our wedding night, and it's already over." Pausing, Beatrix added glumly, "At least my part of it is."
Christopher averted his face, but she could see that he was struggling to contain a laugh. When he had mastered himself, he looked down at her with a slight smile and smoothed her hair back from her face. "I can make you ready again."
Beatrix was quiet for a moment as she evaluated her spent nerves and limp body. "I don't think so," she said. "I feel like a wrung-out kitchen mop."
"I promise to make you ready again," he said, his voice threaded with amusement.
"It will take a long time," Beatrix said, still frowning.
Gathering her into his arms, Christopher crushed his mouth over hers. "I can only hope so. ~ Lisa Kleypas

How can we who are so weak in ourselves, so inferior in power to the enemies confronting us, bear up under our trials which are so numerous, so protracted, so crushing? We could not, and therefore Divine grace has provided for us an all-sufficient Helper. Without His aid we had long since succumbed, mastered by our trials. Hope looks forward to the Glory to come; in the weary interval of waiting, the Spirit supports our poor hearts and keeps grace alive within us. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Every man must decide for himself whether he shall master his world or be mastered by it. ~ James Cash Penney

Too often the educational value of doing well what is done, however little, is overlooked. One thing well done prepares the mind to do the next thing better. Not how much, but how well, should be the motto. One problem thoroughly understood is of more value than a score poorly mastered. ~ Booker T. Washington

Experience is a keen teacher; and long before you had mastered your A B C, or knew where the "white sails" of the Chesapeake were bound, you began, I see, to gauge the wretchedness of the slave, not by his hunger and want, not by his lashes and toil, but by the cruel and blighting death which gathers over his soul. ~ Frederick Douglass

Robinson had long mastered the art of coming instantly awake, a skill which had proved invaluable when his children were young. He could be out of his bed, supplying nutriment, water, or a story, before his wife turned over in her sleep. He attributed his long and happy marriage to the fact that unlike most mothers, his wife got to sleep through the night when he was at home. ~ Kerry Greenwood

Civil disobedience was new to Lancre, but its inhabitants had already mastered some of its more elementary manifestations, viz, the jerking of rakes and sickles in the air with simple up-and-down motions accompanied by grimaces and cries of "Gerrh!," although a few citizens, who hadn't quite grasped the idea, were waving flags and cheering. Advanced students were already eyeing the more combustible buildings inside the walls. Several sellers of hot meat pies and sausages in a bun had appeared from nowhere* and were doing a brisk trade. Pretty soon someone was going to throw something. ~ Terry Pratchett

Chang Tzu tells us of a persevering man who after three laborious years mastered the art of dragon-slaying. For the rest of his days, he had not a single opportunity to test his skills. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Life cannot be mastered by a method but needs to be met with an attitude of openness and discovery ~ Charlotte Selver

No one presumes to teach an art that he has not first mastered through study. How foolish therefore for the inexperienced to assume pastoral authority when the care of souls is the art of arts. ~ St. Gregory Dialogos

Solomon never had a degree,
but he mastered wisdom.
David never had a degree,
but he mastered warfare.
Moses never had a degree,
but he mastered leadership.
Asaph never had a degree,
but he mastered music.
Ahitophel never had a degree,
but he mastered common sense.

Job never had a degree,
but he mastered patience.
Elijah never had a degree,
but he mastered preaching.
Daniel never had a degree,
but he mastered oracles.
Paul never had a degree,
but he mastered theology.
Jesus never had a degree,
but he mastered life.

Imhotep never went to university,
but he built pyramids.
Amenhotep never went to university,
but he built schools.
Thutmose never went to university,
but he built pyramids.
Akhenaten never went to university,
but he built states.
Ramses never went to university,
but he built empires. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

She alone is the happy woman who has learned to extract happiness, not from ideal conditions, but from the actual ones about her. The woman who has mastered the secret will not wait for ideal surroundings; she will not wait until next year, next decade, until she gets rich, until she can travel abroad ... but she will make the most out of life today, where she is. Paradise is here or nowhere. You must take your joy with you or you will never find it. ~ Orison Swett Marden

There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge. ~ Bella DePaulo

I will repeat a technique until it is mastered, no matter when that will be. One certainty though: it will be. ~ Georges St-Pierre

Perfection is an illusion that I have mastered. It is the weak who suffer in mediocrity. But my fears are very real and the story of my past is what nightmares are made of. The monsters no longer hide under my bed. I welcome them under the covers. Popularity is a contest after all and I was anything but a loser. ~ Teresa Mummert

It is only when you have mastered the art of loving yourself that you can truly love others. it's only when you have opened your own heart that you can touch the hearts of others. when you feel centered and alive, you are in much better position to be a better person. ~ Robin S. Sharma

Love, we must part now: do not let it be
Calamitous and bitter. In the past
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more eager to be free,
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see
The grain going forward to a different use.

There is regret. Always, there is regret.
But it is better that our lives unloose,
As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light,
Break from an estuary with their courses set,
And waving part, and waving drop from sight.

- Love We Must Part ~ Philip Larkin

I used to be focused on being the dopest rapper in the game, and then once that became what I was, I wanted something different, and I wanted to become the best businessman in the game. I wanted to learn how to master the business like I mastered the rap. ~ Snoop Dogg

It was too perfect to last,' so I am tempted to say of our marriage. But it can be meant in two ways. It may be grimly pessimistic - as if God no sooner saw two of His creatures happy than He stopped it ('None of that here!'). As if He were like the Hostess at the sherry-party who separates two guests the moment they show signs of having got into a real conversation. But it could also mean 'This had reached its proper perfection. This had become what it had in it to be. Therefore of course it would not be prolonged.' As if God said, 'Good; you have mastered that exercise. I am very pleased with it. And now you are ready to go on to the next. ~ C.S. Lewis

Failure can't live in the company of perseverance.

Failure eventually surrenders. Corky and Shirley taught me this. It took them ten years to win Blackpool. Ten years! Some people would give up and throw in the towel after ten minutes! Every time they lost, all the people around them blamed Corky. But he was relentless. He was going to prove his talent not just to the naysayers but also to himself. There were many times as a competitive dancer when I felt deflated and not good enough, but I never gave up--the Ballases never let me. You always have to keep on moving forward and having faith. Think of the greatest leaders we know. What do they all have in common? They all fought some uphill battle to get where they are. Call it tenacity, persistence, or plain old stubbornness. When someone or something tries to push me off my path, that's when I dig my heels in even harder. I'll be honest: in some areas of my life, I have this mastered. In others, I need a little reminder now and then. There's nothing you can't do if you see it through. ~ Derek Hough

The Bible is not a textbook. Nor is it a manual to be studied, mastered, and mechanically applied. Instead, I believe we should listen to the Word of God and reflect upon it like poetry till it infiltrates the soul. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

The wise have mastered body, word, and mind. They are the true masters. ~ Gautama Buddha

Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men ... it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid ... knowledge seemed to him a very superficial affair, easily mastered: judging from the conversations of his elders he had apparently got already more than was necessary for mature life. ~ George Eliot

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth. ~ Stephen Fry

I'm pleased-very pleased-that you've finally made your choice. It's about time you came to your senses."
He arched a brow. "Even if it took a kidnapping to do it?"
She nodded sagely. "Even so." She paused, then more gently asked, "She's the right one for you, isn't she?"
He held her gaze, then nodded. "Yes. Definitely." He hesitated, then added, "I couldn't live without her."
Caro's smile widened until she was beaming. "Wonderful. That's how it should be."
He wasn't so sure he needed to hear that; the sense of vulnerability and dependency took some getting used to; he wasn't yet sure he'd mastered the knack. "Sadly, it seems that whenever I get close to a prospective wedding, I end up wounded. With you and Michael, I got shot and nearly died. This time, with me and Heather, I got gored and nearly died. I suppose I should be happy that Constance and Cordelia are already married."
Caro laughed. "You probably escaped them because they're so much older that you-you were only a lad when they wed." She paused, head tilting as she studied him. Still smiling, she went on, "You're a protector, you know. That's what you are-that's what you do. And now you've found the lady you're supposed to protect for the rest of your life." Her smile deepened. "Once you marry her, you'll be safe."
He humphed, but continued to smile, and didn't attempt to argue.
Because she was right.
Heather was the lady he would protect for the rest of his life. ~ Stephanie Laurens

The aim is never to become a master of the Word, but to be mastered by it. ~ D. A. Carson

Technique-bodily control-must be mastered only because the body must not stand in the way of the soul's expression. ~ La Meri

There is something remarkably and peculiarly English about the passion for sitting on damp seats watching open-air drama only the English have mastered the art of being truly uncomfortable while facing up to culture. ~ Sheridan Morley

But what is this state? It is like a morning of spring, varied in its life and beauty, yet one and entire.
All the conflicts and contradictions of life are reconciled; knowledge, love and action harmonized; pleasure and pain become one in beauty, enjoyment and renunciation equal in goodness; the breach between the finite and the infinite fills with love and overflows; every moment carries its message of the eternal; the formless appears to us in the form of the flower, of the fruit; the boundless takes us up in his arms as a father and walks by our side as a friend.
While yet we have not attained the internal harmony, and the wholeness of our being, our life remains a life of habits. The world still appears to us as a machine, to be mastered where it is useful, to be guarded against where it is dangerous, and never to be known in its full fellowship with us, alike in its physical nature and in its spiritual life and beauty. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Those who mastered in the art of falling have no fear of rising! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Global collaboration is something that Wiki mastered in a small way and here we can master it in a big way. ~ Ward Cunningham

His gaze wandered from the windows to the stars, as if he would have read in them something that was hidden from him. Many of us would, if we could; but none of us so much as know our letters in the stars yet - or seem likely to do it, in this state of existence - and few languages can be read until their alphabets are mastered. ~ Charles Dickens

Many a person over the years has tried- both successfully and unsuccessfully, to get rid of their inner demons. Those who are successful are deemed artists, those who are not are call dreamers at best and lunatics at worse. But where exactly resides that line on which two worlds collide? Does somebody know? Is somebody fit to tell? Who's to say that those deemed lunatics are not just successes on the making? Who says that those who claim to be just a tad bit crazy are not just as crazy as those that had completely lost it? Maybe, and bear with me here…everyone is as crazy as the one before them and the next one could ever possibly be. Maybe at the end- it's just that some have mastered creating a façade of calmness and collection while others don't bother going through all that trouble anymore, if they ever did. Perhaps we all have demons…it's just that some people have demons far more toxic and difficult to ignore than others. ~ Eiry Nieves

For soon the body is discarded, Then what does it feel? A useless log of wood, it lies on the ground, Then what does it know? Your worst enemy cannot harm you As much as your own thoughts, unguarded. But once mastered, No one can help you as much, Not even your father or your mother. ~ Gautama Buddha

He started to list the coin vanishes he had mastered, which reminded him of the coin he had tossed into Laura's grave, and then, in his head, Audrey was telling him that Laura had died with Robbie's cock in her mouth, and once again he felt a small hurt in his heart. ~ Neil Gaiman

Wherever You Are, Be There
One of the major reasons why we fail to find happiness or to create unique lifestyle is because we have not yet mastered the art of being. ~ Jim Rohn

Once you have mastered the ten thousand states of mind, it's paranirvana, the absorption into the stillness forever. ~ Frederick Lenz

Connubial
Because with alarming accuracy
she'd been identifying patterns
I was unaware of - this tic, that
tendency, like the way I've mastered
the language of intimacy
in order to conceal how I felt
I knew I was in danger
of being terribly understood. ~ Stephen Dunn

Those were the girls she'd been most jealous of, growing up - not just the thin, fashionable ones, but the types who surfed or rock climbed, who lived in such obvious peace with their bodies. Took joy in using their bodies. Mastered them. Merry's had always felt like a bully. A great, heavy oaf pinning her to the ground, taunting. ~ Cara McKenna

I re-mastered 'The Conversation' a few years ago for DVD. 'The Conversation' was the first film I edited on a flatbed machine - a KEM editing machine. I've been using Final Cut or the AVID for 12 years now, so I was interested in looking at this film and seeing if I could tell if it had been edited the old way. Truth be told, I couldn't. ~ Walter Murch

The dream for many millennial women is to make a difference as social or political entrepreneurs. They are using the social media and marketing tools they have mastered to empower less fortunate women and direct them onto career tracks that women have traditionally avoided, like science and technology. ~ Gail Sheehy

Few fallacies are more dangerous or easier to fall into than that by which, having read a given book, we assume that we will continue to know its contents permanently, or having mastered a discipline in the past, we assume that we control it in the present. Philosophically speaking, "to learn" is a verb with not legitimate tense. ~ Robert Grudin

pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From them the vestiges of a self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them. ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

Acceptance is an art that must be mastered if we want to keep our friends for the span of life that remains to us, and presently step off the stage with our self-respect intact. ~ Ethel Smyth

I do my workouts in the morning, and often I'll take someone from my team. The person I'm meeting with can pick the class, whether it's a spin or barre class, or going for a power walk. It's hard to run and talk - I haven't mastered that yet. ~ Alexa Von Tobel

An adult mind that is brimming with chunks is a powerful engine of reason, but it comes with a cost: a failure to communicate with other minds that have not mastered the same chunks. ~ Steven Pinker

What does it mean that we find victims who suffer with dignity more attractive than victims who don't? What does it mean that we don't mind it when perpetrators, torn apart by their own experiences, weep openly - but we are rendered uncomfortable when victims do the same? I don't mean that each and every person has this experience: many of us feel like weeping when we see the carnage created by a suicide bombing and the grieving and shocked faces of the survivors. I mean instead that in all I have read, I detect a strong cultural bias toward aversion when confronted with victims who act as if they have suffered.
[…]
"Fragile, powerless, and helpless victims make us uncomfortable, evoke complicated responses in us, and make it hard for us to empathize with the humiliation they underwent.
[…]
one claim I make in different ways in the book - and very explicitly in chapter 3 - is that to be really credible, a victim has to appear to have mastered his or her suffering. ~ Carolyn J. Dean

It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It is not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change. ~ Jeanette Winterson

But having mastered the art of descending the stairs to a gathering of admirers, she had yet to master the art of ascending the stairs alone. Perhaps no one has. ~ Amor Towles

Since ancient times, people have bowed down to idols in the appearance of humility and contrition. But their goal wasn't to be mastered by the idol. People worship to get things. We choose idols in part because we believe that they will give us what we want. The god of drugs brings fearlessness; the god of sex promises pleasure and intimacy; the god of wealth holds out power and influence. We can feel miserable about ourselves because we want to be great, at least at something, and we are not feeling very great. Like the prophets of Baal, we are arrogant enough to believe that we can manipulate the idol - whether by cutting or some other form of works righteousness - so it will relent and give us what we want. ~ Edward T. Welch

I don't think I've mastered anything. I'm still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That's what life is like. ~ Harrison Ford

Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study. They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play. ~ Carl Orff

When the robot mind is mastered, undisciplined thinking ceases and is replaced by awareness. Awareness can know love. ~ Barry Long

To be brief, I say that since Fortune changes and men stand fixed in their old ways, they are prosperous so long as there is congruity between them, and the reverse when there is not. Of this, however, I am well persuaded, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious. For Fortune is a woman who to be kept under must be beaten and roughly handled; and we see that she suffers herself to be more readily mastered by those who so treat her than by those who are more timid in their approaches. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the infinite scale of man's wants and God's goodness. ~ Hugh Miller

Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered by a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marle? ~ William Shakespeare

He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars. ~ Jack London

He made a blushing cital of himself,
And chid his truant youth with such a grace
As if he mastered there a double sprite
Of teaching and of learning instantly.
There did he pause: but let me tell the world:
If he outlive the envy of this day,
England did never owe so sweet a hope,
So much misconstrued in his wantonness. ~ William Shakespeare

All the sources are secondary, and few are new; I have not mastered recent scholarship of the early sixteenth century. ~ William Manchester

I was warned when entering seminary that if I was not careful, a dangerous habit could form: I could learn to read the Bible and do nothing in response. I still remember our seminary president warning us that to study to the neglect of action becomes easier and easier with each occurrence. We should be terrified if we have mastered the art of becoming convicted and doing nothing in response. ~ Mike Yankoski

In most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

The moral crisis she'd just gone through made her feel indulgent toward the faults, the delinquencies of others. How thoroughly a human being can be buffeted and over-mastered by fate had been borne in upon her with appalling force. ~ Emmuska Orczy

I couldn't tell you exactly what I like about golf. Just when you think you've got it mastered it lets you know you haven't. I'm just crazy enough to do it. ~ Clint Eastwood

There are some remarkable parallels between basketball and politics. Michael Jordan has already mastered the skill most needed for political success: how to stay aloft without visible means of support. ~ Margaret Thatcher

White Hot Concentration is the unappreciated fruit of hard ligting, especially squats. When your in the squat rack, with a serious amount of weight overhead, your life literally depends on maintaining concentration. You learn to block out the swirling images in the mirror, the obnoxious chatter of the people next to you, the fat drop of sweat running down your nose. Once you've mastered this concentration in the weight room, duplicating it on the race course is relatively easy. Champions have only a few things in common. One weapon they all possess is White Hot Concentration. ~ Brad Alan Lewis

Effective listening is something that can absolutely be learned and mastered. Even if you find attentive listening difficult and, in certain situations, boring or unpleasant, that doesn't mean you can't do it. You just have to know what to work on. ~ Travis Bradberry

The art of the cuisine, when fully mastered, is the one human capability of which only good things can be said. ~ Friedrich Durrenmatt

In my own opinion, the average American's cultural shortcomings can be likened to those of the educated barbarians of ancient Rome. These were barbarians who learned to speak--and often to read and write--Latin. They acquired Roman habits of dress and deportment. Many of them handily mastered Roman commercial, engineering and military techniques--but they remained barbarians nonetheless. They failed to develop any understanding, appreciation or love for the art and culture of the great civilization around them. ~ J. Paul Getty

I will not mention the name (and what bits of it I happen to give here appear in decorous disguise) of that man, that Franco-Hungarian writer... I would rather not dwell upon him at all, but I cannot help it - he is surging up from under my pen. Today one does not hear much about him; and this is good, for it proves that I was right in resisting his evil spell, right in experiencing a creepy chill down my spine whenever this or that new book of his touched my hand. The fame of his likes circulates briskly but soon grows heavy and stale; and as for history it will limit his life story to the dash between two dates. Lean and arrogant, with some poisonous pun ever ready to fork out and quiver at you, and with a strange look of expectancy in his dull brown veiled eyes, this false wag had, I daresay, an irresistible effect on small rodents. Having mastered the art of verbal invention to perfection, he particularly prided himself on being a weaver of words, a title he valued higher than that of a writer; personally, I never could understand what was the good of thinking up books, of penning things that had not really happened in some way or other; and I remember once saying to him as I braved the mockery of his encouraging nods that, were I a writer, I should allow only my heart to have imagination, and for the rest rely upon memory, that long-drawn sunset shadow of one's personal truth.

I had known his books before I knew him; a faint disgust was already replacing the ~ Vladimir Nabokov

He mastered the inner world while holding the outer in contempt, and this led to catastrophe. ~ Frank Herbert

I'm gonna master it just like I mastered the other kind of French." He winks at me.
Kitty and I both scream at him for that. "Don't talk like that in front of my sister!" I yell, shoving him in the chest.
"I was kidding!"
"Also, you're not that good at French kissing." Even though, yeah, he is.
Peter gives me a Who are you kidding? look, and I shrug, because who am I kidding? ~ Jenny Han

Much is known by reading, more is mastered by doing. ~ T.F. Hodge

Some preachers master thier subjects; some subjects master the preacher; once in awhile one meets a preacher who is both master of, and also mastered by his subject. The apostle Paul, I am sure, was in that category. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger. ~ Aldous Huxley

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you. It is like a bad dream. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

he couldn't see me breaking apart because I had mastered masks for so many years and he was believing it.
And for once in my life, I wished someone would see right through my lies. That he would spare me this hurt. ~ R. Scarlett

Culture exists in order to project the infantile fantasies into external reality, where they may be seen and mastered. ~ Norman Oliver Brown

There are things which couldn't be expressed by the words,
when you've mastered certain lesson for more than 30 years. ~ Toba Beta

Everybody gets plagued by indifference and monotony. The truth is, there are concepts that are constantly being repeated in this world, since the beginning of time, but it doesn't seem like any of us have mastered them. So my advice is to keep going with the topic, which usually has to do with redemption, love, compassion, freedom, injustice, perversion, divinity, the diabolical ... keep going with your thoughts, and your heart, and push them through to transformation. ~ Kelly Cutrone

Let it be clear to all: Greatness belongs to those who have mastered the ability to focus relentlessly on their ambitions and act decisively toward them. ~ Brendon Burchard

I was able to pitch a tent and carry a backpack twenty-five miles a day through mountains - I'd mastered a thousand amazing physical feats - physically I'd become undeniably confident and capable - but physical weakness had never been the problem that I had. My true problem had been passivity, the lifelong-conditioned submission that became my nature. ~ Aspen Matis

The residents of the the town are attracted by the words and the pictures on the signs. They know full well the perils posed by overpopulation. Many of them have mastered the use of several types of contraceptives. Now they understand the dangers posed by traffic accidents. They know that even though overpopulation is perilous, the living must do their best to have a good time and avoid being killed in traffic accident. ~ Yu Hua

Unfit for the schools, and in good measure wanting to be unfit for them, and lacking the savvy I needed to master the streets, I felt there could be no escape for me or, honestly, anyone else. The fearless boys and girls who would knuckle up, call on cousins and crews, and if it came to it, pull guns seemed to have mastered the streets. But their knowledge peaked at seventeen, when they ventured out of their parents' homes and discovered that America had guns and cousins, too. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Never did I fight for the poor. I fought against the rich
which of course isn't at all the same thing. In any case, the fighting was the point. You don't fight to become free
to fight is to be free. A man with a gun and the will to use it can't be mastered, he can only be killed. ~ James Carlos Blake

Very private people have mastered the art of telling you little about themselves but doing it in such a way you think you know a lot. ~ Anonymous

Simply because you can perform feats of power does not mean you are, in the classical sense, fully enlightened. It means that you have mastered a few aspects of the mystical kundalini. That's all it means. ~ Frederick Lenz

A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You'll ask me why. It's because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns. ~ Nikos Kazantzakis

When one contemplates the conquest of nature by technology one must remember that that conquest had to include our own bodies. Calvinism provided the determined and organised men and women who could rule the mastered world. The punishment they inflicted on non-human nature, they had first inflicted on themselves. ~ George Grant

Aomame had mastered at least ten separate techniques for kicking men in the balls. ~ Haruki Murakami

Do you always wear Malaysian imitations of Brooks Brothers blue oxford button-downs, Mr. Laney?"

Laney had looked down at his shirt, or tried to.

"Malaysia?"

"The stitch-count's dead on, but they still haven't mastered the thread-tension."

"Oh."

"Never mind. A little prototypic nerd chic could actually lend a certain frisson, around here. You could lose the tie, though. Definitely lose the tie. And keep a collection of felt-tipped pens in your pocket. Unchewed, please. Plus one of those fat flat highlighters, in a really nasty fluorescent shade."

"Are you joking?"

"Probably, Mr. Laney. May I call you Colin?"

"Yes."

She never did call him "Colin," then or ever. "You'll find that humor is essential at Slitscan, Laney. A necessary survival tool. You'll find the type that's most viable here is fairly oblique."

"How do you mean, Ms. Torrance?"

"Kathy. I mean difficult to quote effectively in a memo. Or a court of law. ~ William Gibson

Machines never made mankind happy and never will make. He who is trying to make us believe this will claim that happiness is in the machine; but it is always in the mind. That man alone who is the lord of his mind can become happy, and none else. And what, after all, is this power of machinery? Why should a man who can send a current of electricity through a wire be called a very great man and a very intelligent man? Does not nature do a million times more than that every moment? Why not then fall down and worship nature? What avails it if you have power over the whole of the world, if you have mastered every atom in the universe? That will not make you happy unless you have the power of happiness in yourself, until you have conquered yourself. ~ Swami Vivekananda

The cemetery watchman left the room and returned with a tray holding three small skulls and a large one. I could feel the short hairs on the back of my neck standing up of their own accord. None of them were real though; they were wood or celluloid imitations. They all had flaps that opened at the top; one was a jug and the other three steins.

The man behind the desk named the toast. 'To our Friend!' I thought he meant myself at first; he meant that shadowy enemy of all mankind, the Grim Reaper.

'We are called The Friends of Death,' he explained to me when the grisly containers had been emptied. 'To outline our creed and purpose briefly, it is this: That death is life, and life is death. We have mastered death, and no member of the Friends of Death need ever fear it. They 'die,' it is true, but after death they are buried in special graves in our private cemetery - graves having air vents, such as you discovered. Also, our graves are equipped with electric signals, so that after the bodies of our buried members begin to respond to the secret treatment our scientists have given them before internment, we are warned. Then we come and release them - and they live again. Moreover, they are released, freed of their thralldom; from then on death is an old familiar friend instead of an enemy. They no longer fear it. Do you not see what a wonderful boon this would be in your case, Brother Bud; you who have suffered so from that fear?' ("Graves For The Living") ~ Cornell Woolrich

I don't spend that much time in the studio. When I first started doing music, I was in the studio every day just trying to build my portfolio. But now, even though I haven't totally mastered my craft, I'm at a pretty high level. ~ Fetty Wap