He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still.
— Laozi
Lavish Self Restraint quotations
The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
If you have total freedom to design, you won't get anything interesting.
So I give myself restraints in order to kind of push myself through, to create something new. It's the torture that I give myself, the pain and the struggle that I go through. So it's self-given, but that's the only way, I think, to make a strong, good new creation.
Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character.
We can't have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint.
Self confidence is the ability to exercise restraint in the face of disrespect and still show respect in response.
Grant that I may become beautiful in my soul within, and that all my external possessions may be in harmony with my inner self. May I consider the wise to be rich, and may I have such riches as only a person of self-restraint can bear or endure.
Self restraint in speech, food, entertainment and vanity are the most essential fundamental of spiritual growth.
Humility and self-restraint is the True Objective of Kenpo
The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
Liberty is not foolproof. For its beneficent working it demands self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the practical and attainable, and of the fact that there are laws of nature which are beyond our power to change.
I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.
But the self-controlled man, moving among objects, with his senses under restraint, and free from both attraction and repulsion, attains peace.
Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn't need if you had stayed single.
Will, therefore, is the unbroken determination to exercise free choice as well as self-restraint, in spite of the unavoidable experience of shame and doubt in infancy.
A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority.
They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
The difference between a stable society and an unstable one is that the restraints in an unstable one are external. In a stable society government ultimately becomes unnecessary; the restraints on people's actions are internal, they're self-disciplined.
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity, and self-control.
Willful ignorance and endless laws become the replacement for self-education and self-restraint, because ignorance and laws are easy.
An element of abstention, of restraint, must enter into all finer joys.
Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character;
it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint.
Until we lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.
Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind.
In the Heart's cavity, the sole Brahman as an ever-persisting 'I' shines direct in the form of the Self. Into the Heart enter thyself, with mind in search or in deeper plunge. Or by restraint of life-movement be firmly poised in the Self.
The most important thing about the gentleman was that he was an idealist.
... He was bred up to a code of self-restraint which taught resistance to pragmatic temptation. He was definitely a man of sentiment, who refused to put matters on a basis of materialism and self-aggrandizement.
The world is living today in what might be described as an era of carnality, which glorifies sex, hates restraint, identifies purity with coldness, innocence with ignorance, and turns men and women into Buddhas with their eyes closed, hands folded across their breasts, intently looking inward, thinking only of self.
Discipline enables you to think first and act second.
The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best.
It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues - self-restraint.
Golf in the interest of good health and good manners.
It promotes self-restraint and affords a chance to play the man and act the gentleman.
Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint.
The best leader is the one who has the sense to surround himself with outstanding people and self-restraint not to meddle with how they do their jobs.
There are limits to self-indulgence, none to restraint.
Sexual self-restraint is only a preliminary stage in the ego's evolution.
For want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making.
At the same time the Muslims are commanded to exercise self-restraint as much as possible. Force is a dangerous weapon. It may have to be used for self-defense or self-preservation, but we must always remember that self-restraint is pleasing in the eyes of Allah. Even when we are fighting, it should be for a principle not out of passion.