The living self has one purpose only: to come into its own fullness of being, as a tree comes into full blossom, or a bird into spring beauty, or a tiger into lustre.
The guys who stick around are the smartest guys and the guys who are the most self-driven. You have to have drive. The coaches can only take you so far. You have to want to learn and work.
Let a man neither give himself over to pleasures ... nor yet let him give himself over to self-mortification ... To the exclusion of both these extremes, the Truth-Finder has discovered a middle course.
That's what the leadership was teaching me, day by day: that the self-interest I was supposed to be looking for extended well beyond the immediacy of issues, that beneath the small talk and sketchy biographies and received opinions, people carried with them some central explanation of themselves. Stories full of terror and wonder, studded with events that still haunted or inspired them. Sacred stories.
Freedom is born of self-discipline. No individual, no nation, can achieve or maintain liberty without self-control. The undisciplined man (or woman) is a slave to his own weaknesses.
What is my task? First of all, my task is to be pleasing to Christ. To be empty of self and be filled with Himself. To be filled with the Holy Spirit; to be led by the Holy Spirit.
We are made of stellar ash. Our origin and evolution have been tied to distant cosmic events. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.
Greater in battle
than the man who would conquer
a thousand-thousand men,
is he who would conquer
just one —
himself.
Better to conquer yourself
than others.
When you've trained yourself,
living in constant self-control,
neither a deva nor gandhabba,
nor a Mara banded with Brahmas,
could turn that triumph
back into defeat.
Moderation, which consists in indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.