Quotes About Control

Obviously, you can't control everything, but you are obliged to take care of the few things you can. I'm an optimist, basically, who acts like a pessimist. On principle. Just in case.

Abbott says, 'Biggest...difference...between...people...is...quality...of...attention.' And since a person's quality of attention is one of the few things about her that a human can control, then she better damn well do it, say I. Put that together with the Golden Rule in a nutshell, and you've got my philosophy of life. Abbott's too. And you don't need religion for that.

When you suffer an attack of nerves you're being attacked by the nervous system. What chance has a man got against a system?

There were times when it seemed the different parts of him where not all under the same management.

Forget the clock. It has no power over time.

Once in a while a story is spectacular enough to break through and attract media attention, but the swell quickly subsides into the general glut of bad news over which we, as citizens, have so little control.

you're like the leader of a big brass band made up of all the jazzy stuff of the planet, and you're floating out there in space, standing on this great garbage heap of a world, with your hair slicked back and your natty suit and your stick up in the air, surrounded by all the eager things, and for one quick, beautiful moment, all their voices go silent, waiting till you bring your baton down. Music or madness. It's totally up to you.

But maybe that was the trick—to accept the responsibility and forgo the control? To love without expectation?

Music or madness. It's totally up to you.

But maybe that was the trick—to accept the responsibility and forgo the control? To love without expectation? A paradox for sure, but such a relief.

Nations that are down on their luck and bitter about it are generally disliked and shunned by their neighbors, just as individual people in that position are. Those that are both impoverished and embittered tend to lose the ability to control themselves.

When people lose control of their emotions, they tend to seek absolute satisfaction from the object of their fury. And since absolute satisfaction does not exist in this world, I knew she was going to rave on until she reached a state of exhaustion, and a certain queer sense of fulfillment.

His Highness worked on the assumption that even the most loyal press should not be given in abundance, because that might create a habit of reading, and from there it is only a single step to the habit of thinking, and it is well known what inconveniences, vexations, troubles, and worries thinking causes.

I'm sure we've all experienced really malevolent feelings once or twice in our lives, the desire to kill somebody,say.but there's always a braking mechanism somewhere along the line that stop us.

So it isn't I who am master of my life, I am just one of the threads to be woven into life's calico! Well then, even if I cannot spin, I can at least cut the thread in two.

A Reflexão é o anjo exterminador da espontaneidade… Se fosse verdade que a reflexão devesse controlar a inclinação amorosa, nunca haveria casamento.

And the desire to prevent all misunderstanding about an enterprise one is about to undertake is a thing that could occur only to a youth. There is nothing that so easily gets beyond one's control and so easily becomes misunderstood, as a misunderstanding. Even if one were to undertake nothing more than merely to avoid misunderstanding – then in that case one would presumably become the most thoroughly misunderstood of all men.

to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it.

but pulling the trigger on that high-riding bitch

Fear worked both ways - if you suppressed the physical symptoms, it calmed your mind.

Fundamentalism isn't about religion, it's about power.

Rage made you the creature of those who enraged you, it gave them too much power. Rage killed the mind, and now more than ever the mind needed to live, to find a way of rising above the mindlessness.

In the end, rage, no matter how profoundly justified, destroys the enraged.

You can lay your strategies as carefully as you like, but women will undo them at a stroke.