Mastery Quotes

Let a man practise the profession he best knows.[Lat., Quam quisque novit artem, in hac se exerceat.]

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

If you hit a hole in one every hole, you wouldn’t play golf for very long.

Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I've understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. The height of cultivation is really nothing special. It is merely simplicity; the ability to express the utmost with the minimum.

Love your work, then you will find pleasure in mastering it.

To blow is not to play on the flute; you must move the fingers.[Ger., Blasen ist nicht floten, ihr musst die Finger bewegen.]

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.

How can one liberate the many? By first liberating his own being. He does this not by elevating himself, but by lowering himself. He lowers himself to that which is simple, modest, true; integrating it into himself, he becomes a master of simplicity, modesty, truth.

There are many skillful apprentices, but few master workmen.

Mastery is proven only in limitation,and law alone can give us freedom.

The young man should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. Next, copy work after the hand of a good master, to gain the habit of drawing parts of the body well; and then to work from nature, to confirm the lessons learned.

Only those who want nothing are masters of Nature.

The Artist always has the masters in his eyes.

A good runner leaves no footprints.

The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.

You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.

Those who become enamoured of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners who put to the sea in a ship without rudder or compass and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished for port.

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self.

A master can tell you what he expects of you. A teacher, though, awakens your own expectations.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself.

Courage faces fear and thereby masters it

I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. I've fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody's going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I'm crazy or I keep getting better.

We all can be masters at our craft, but you have to make sacrifices that come along with making that decision.

Remember, you are expressing the techniques and not doing the techniques.

A good speaker does not stutter.

Poetry is the only life got, the only work done, the only pure product and free labor of man, performed only when he has put all the world under his feet, and conquered the last of his foes.

It was my ambition all of my life to be master of the spoken word.

If you have five elements available use only four. If you have four elements use three.

It reflects no great honor on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well -- such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscapes, or the like -- in other words, confining himself to some particular object of study. This is so because there is scarcely a person so devoid of genius as to fail of success if he applies himself earnestly to one branch of study and practices it continually.

Braveness is resistance to concern, mastery of panic - not absense of anxiety.

No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect.

You could be the world's best garbage man, the world's best model; it don't matter what you do if you're the best.

Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.

How do you expect to learn to dance when you have not even learned to walk! And above the dancer is still the flyer and his bliss.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

Good artists copy, great artists steal.

Practice makes perfect. After a long time of practicing, our work will become natural, skillfull, swift, and steady.

He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable.

A kung fu man lives without being dependant on the opinions of others, and a master, unlike the beginner, holds himself in reserve. He is quiet and unassuming, with no desire to show off.

Unless we do more than simply learn the trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art of life.

Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.

Why not simply honor your parents, love your children, help your brothers and sisters, be faithful to your friends, care for your mate with devotion, complete your work cooperatively and joyfully, assume responsibility for problems, practice virtue without first demanding it of others, understand the highest truths yet retain an ordinary manner? That would be true clarity, true simplicity, true mastery.

The greatest artists always come round to simplicity.

Regardless of what you do put in, every game boils down to doing the things you do best and doing them over and over again.

There's nothing more difficult than a line.

The shoemaker makes a good shoe because he makes nothing else.

The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.

Ultimately the way to win the game of life, is found in only one thing: Our ability to choose meaning in any life circumstance. Become the master of meaning and you master your life.

The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity ... the ability to express the utmost with the minimum. It is the halfway cultivation that leads to ornamentation.

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them...digest them...a student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by 20 books he has merely skimmed.

You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.

How many years you have to keep on doing, until you know what to do and how to do!

He who holds balance...has attained the highest post in the world.

I've already discovered how to hold myself within range.

The best fighter is never angry.

It took me a lifetime.

No one as ever completed their apprenticeship.

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.