Sunday, February 16, 2020 – Keep Calm
To learn to see – to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides. This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality. One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat. ~ Jules Renard
Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy. ~ George Herbert
Power is so characteristically calm, that calmness in itself has the aspect of strength. ~ Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances. ~ Thomas Jefferson
Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies, subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society. ~ Benjamin Franklin
Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. ~ Benjamin Franklin
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat. ~ Woodrow Wilson
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control: these three alone lead one to sovereign power. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage. ~ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
The best fighter is never angry. ~ Lao Tzu
I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get. ~ Richard M. Nixon
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. ~ George Eliot
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak. ~ Lillian Hellman
I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself. ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
Any woman who is sure of her own wits is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper. ~ Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White
Self-command is the main elegance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel
The first attribute that characterizes the greater man from the moron is his thicker layer of inhibition. ~ Martin H. Fischer
Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me. ~ Michel de Montaigne
Punishment may make us obey the orders we are given, but at best it will only teach obedience to authority, not a self-control which enhances our self-respect. ~ Bruno Bettelheim
Poise: the ability to be ill at ease inconspicuously. ~ Earl Wilson
I’m from Iowa, we don’t know what cool is. ~ Ashton Kutcher
The simple truth is that balding African-American men look cool when they shave their heads, whereas balding white men look like giant thumbs. ~ Dave Barry
Being uncool is being pretty much the coolest you can be. ~ Rufus Wainwright
The keynote of American civilization is a sort of warm-hearted vulgarity. The Americans have none of the irony of the English, none of their cool poise, none of their manner. But they do have friendliness. Where an Englishman would give you his card, an American would very likely give you his shirt. ~ Raymond Chandler
Discipline and concentration are a matter of being interested. ~ Tom Kite
Discipline is remembering what you want. ~ David Campbell
Some models of self-control are able to achieve their serenity easily because the soul fires never burn brightly to begin with. ~ Joseph J. Ellis
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained. ~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it. ~ Mae West
How like herrings and onions our vices are in the morning after we have committed them. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge
What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don’t want to discourage it completely. ~ Franklin P. Jones
It’s all right letting yourself go, as long as you can get yourself back. ~ Mick Jagger
Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves. ~ Henry Miller
If we resist our passions, it is more because of their weakness than because of our strength. ~ La Rochefoucauld
Most people want to be delivered from temptation but would like it to keep in touch. ~ Robert Orben
Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values… and witnesses. ~ Franklin P. Jones
An element of abstention, of restraint, must enter into all finer joys. ~ Vida D. Scudder
You must have discipline to have fun. ~ Julia Child
I have been cautioned to talk but be careful not to say anything. I do not consider this a difficult task. ~ Mark Twain
You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there. ~ Yogi Berra
Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there’s no one watching you. ~ Tom Lehrer
There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method. ~ Herman Melville
I can have incredible self-discipline. But see, I think it’s obviously a form of stupidity. ~ John Malkovich
For fast-acting relief try slowing down. ~ Lily Tomlin
Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. ~ Langston Hughes
Evidently, I’d suffered an epiphany: the subconscious realization that when it comes to coolness, nothing the human race has ever invented is more cool than a book. ~ Tom Robbins, Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life
Just Above Sunset 