Sunday, October 20, 2019 – No Meltdowns Allowed
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
Keep cool; anger is not an argument. ~ Daniel Webster
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat. ~ Woodrow Wilson
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
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control: these three alone lead one to sovereign power. ~ Alfred Lord Tennyson
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
Self-command is the main elegance. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
Be blind. Be stupid. Be British. Be careful. ~ Virginia Graham
Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact. ~ George Eliot
Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there’s no one watching you. ~ Tom Lehrer
Intelligent or not, we all make mistakes and perhaps the intelligent mistakes are the worst, because so much careful thought has gone into them. ~ Peter Ustinov
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
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak. ~ Lillian Hellman
I can take it. The tougher it gets, the cooler I get. ~ Richard M. Nixon
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
In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise. ~ Virgil Thomson
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
Rather be dead than cool. ~ Kurt Cobain
I’m a Muslim, but I think Jesus would have a drink with me. He would be cool. He would talk to me. ~ Mike Tyson
Sunday school don’t make you cool forever. ~ Sly Stone
Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes. ~ Walt Whitman
Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not involved in the process of thinking. This is true only of certain persons. ~ Will Cuppy
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
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
I will be calm. I will be mistress of myself. ~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility
A man, who is good from docility, and not from stern self-control, has no character. ~ Henry Hazlitt
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
Discipline and concentration are a matter of being interested. ~ Tom Kite
Discipline is remembering what you want. ~ David Campbell
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
I generally avoid temptation unless I can’t resist it. ~ Mae West
One should not lose one’s temper unless one is certain of getting more and more angry to the end. ~ William Butler Yeats
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
Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to. ~ Oscar Wilde
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
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. ~ C. S. Lewis
Abstainer, n. – A weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. ~ Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence. ~ Franz Kafka
You must have discipline to have fun. ~ Julia Child
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
Whatever hysteria exists is inflamed by mystery, suspicion and secrecy. Hard and exact facts will cool it. ~ Elia Kazan
Just Above Sunset 