“Past has no power on your present but if you feel it has means you are allowing your past to interfere in your present.”
“A Kung Fu Master is a Practitioner of Martial Arts Who Keeps Practicing.”
“It is way more pleasurable to master yourself than it is to masturbate.”
“Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds.”
“The head alone is a tyrant. The heart alone is chaotic. The marriage of the two is mastery.”
“Masters are those who have simply started to see the difference in what they have learned and are yet to understand ...”
“The King of Sea and Sky was proud of Theo’s mastery. Being a novice was safe. When you are learning how to do something, you do not have to worry about whether or not you are good at it. But when you have done something, have learned how to do it again, you are not safe anymore. Being a master opens you up to judgment.”
“He who can command, he who is a ‘master’ by nature, he who is forceful in deed and gesture – what has he to do with contracts! Such beings violate our every assumption: they come unexpectedly, without cause, reason, notice, excuse; they appear as suddenly as lightning, and are too terrible, too sudden, too convincing, too ‘different’ even to be hated. Their work is the instinctive creation and imposition of forms; of all artists, their work is the most instinctive, unconscious – in connection with appearance there arises something new, a system of governance which is alive , in which the functions and parts are defined and related to one another, in which above all no part finds a place unless it has some ‘function’ in connection with the whole. These instinctive organizers, they know nothing of guilt, responsibility, consideration; they are subject to that terrible artist-egoism which gleams like brass, and which sees itself justified to all eternity, in its work, even as a mother sees in her child.”
“Your feelings come from your thoughts, as you master your mind, you ll need to matter feelings too. If an emotion starts to take control… your best weapon is truth. It s ok to feel. Not okay to be controlled by feelings. Don t follow your heart. Follow truth.”
“You cannot transform a domain unless you first thoroughly understand how it works. Which means that one has to acquire the tools of mathematics, learn the basic principles of physics, and become aware of the current state of knowledge. But the old Italian saying seems to apply: Impara l’arte, e mettila da parte (learn the craft, and then set it aside). One cannot be creative without learning what others know, but then one cannot be creative without becoming dissatisfied with that knowledge and rejecting it (or some of it) for a better way.”
“It’s curtain call for the crew of inner voices that have been running their own rowdy performance all these years. Turn up the house lights. Line them up on the catwalk. Observe their costumes, props and characteristic traits. Let them recite their most infamous lines. Appreciate them. And, applaud them because they really had you fooled! Then, let them know one true voice is back.”
“Growth requires that you gain mastery over the tyranny of your own memory.”
“The difficulty lies not in writing well but in earning that ability.”
“People believe that having more is to master, but to master is to do more or equally with less. In its entireness, to master with less decreases the odds, yet displays the better man. For when we truly master, we decrease the odds, not increase it.”
“People will continue to doubt you until they witness first hand the results of what you have mastered.”
“Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. But there is another element, an X factor that Masters inevitably possess, that seems mystical but that is accessible to us all. Whatever field of activity we are involved in, there is generally an accepted path to the top. It is a path that others followed, and because we are conformist creatures, most of us opt for this conventional route. But Masters have a strong inner guiding system and a high level of self-awareness. What has suited others in the past does not suit them, and they know that trying to fit into a conventional mold would only lead to a dampening of spirit, the reality they seek eluding them. And so inevitably, these Masters, as they progress on their career paths, make a choice at a key moment in their lives: they decide to forge their own route, one that others will see as unconventional, but that suits their own spirit and rhythms and leads them closer to discovering the hidden truths of their objects of study. This key choice takes self-confidence and self-awarenes–the X factor that is necessary for attaining mastery...”
“When you have mastered numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any more than you read words when reading books. You will be reading meanings.”