Mastery Quotes

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Writing is something that you can never do as well as it can be done. It is a perpetual challenge and it is more difficult than anything else that I have ever done.

The modern age has a false sense of superiority, because of the great mass of data at its disposal. But the valid criterion of distinction is rather the extent to which man knows how to form and master the material at his command.

I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.

He is an eloquent man who can treat humble subjects with delicacy, lofty things impressively, and moderate things temperately.

When I cook, I generally stick with what I know, what I'm comfortable with, and what I feel I've paid my dues learning, and am good at.

Whatever liberates our spirit, without also giving us mastery over ourselves, is destructive.

Mastery has been achieved when one neither makes a mistake nor hesitates in the performance.

We have already discovered the fact that fear is the chief reason for poverty and failure and misery that takes on a thousand different forms. We have already discovered the fact that the man who masters fear may march on to successful achievement in practically any undertaking, despite all efforts to defeat him.

The best way to get trained is to get mentored - live or by reading or watching videos by masters. That way, you start executing based on lessons from the best.

A good athlete can enter a state of body-awareness in which the right stroke or the right movement happens by itself, effortlessly, without any interference of the conscious will. This is a paradigm for non-action: the purest and most effective form of action. The game plays the game; the poem writes the poem; we can't tell the dancer from the dance. It happens when we trust the intelligence of the universe in the same way that an athlete or a dancer trusts the superior intelligence of the body.

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.

An instructor should exemplify the things he seeks to teach. It will be of great advantage if you yourself can do all you ask of your students and more.

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.

Writing is like anything else - the more you do it, the better you get at it, the easier it comes, and the less concerned you'll be about what's going to happen to it, where it's going, what it sounds like, whether it's right.

Mastery is often taken for egotism.

In daily life what distinguishes the master is the using those materials he has, instead of looking about for what are more renowned, or what others have used well.

Let every man practice the art that he knows best.

Contrary to popular wisdom, knowledge is not power-it's potential power. Knowledge is not mastery. Execution is mastery. Execution will trump knowledge every day of the week.

I hated the sight on TV of big, clumsy, lumbering heavyweights plodding, stalking each other like two Frankenstein monsters, clinging, slugging toe to toe. I knew I could do it better ... circle, dance, shuffle, hit and move ... make an art out of it.

When I was a kid I drew like Michelangelo. It took me years to learn to draw like a kid.

He found whole figures which represented a written word; but he never could manage to represent just the word he wanted - that word was 'eternity', and the Snow Queen had said, "If you can discover that figure, you shall be your own master, and I will make you a present of the whole world and a pair of new skates." But he could not find it out.

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first.

The skillful traveller leaves no traces of his wheels.

I do not fear the man who practices 1,000 kicks one time each. I fear the man who practices 1 kick 1,000 times.

I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.

I am not afraid of a person who knows 10000 kicks. But I am afraid of a person who knows one kick but practices it for 10000 times.

In all things, to serve from the lowest station upwards is necessary. To restrict yourself to a trade is best. For the narrow mind, whatever he attempts is still a trade; for the higher, an art; and the highest in doing one thing does all, or, to speak less paradoxically, in the one thing which he does rightly he sees the likeness of all that is done rightly.

Many young painters would never have taken their pencils in hand if they could have felt, known, and understood, early enough, what really produced a master like Raphael.

Not only is there an art in knowing a thing, but also a certain art in teaching it.

Let a man practice the profession which he best knows.

Good designers copy; great designers steal.

I'm always doing things I can't do. That's how I get to do them.

The summit charms us, the steps to it do not; with the heights before our eyes, we like to linger in the plain. It is only a part of art that can be taught; but the artist needs the whole. He who is only half instructed speaks much and is always wrong; who knows it wholly is content with acting and speaks seldom or late.

A good calculator does not need artificial aids.

Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

The hardest victory is the victory over self.

He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it's there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

He who conquers self conquers all.

The highest technique is to have no technique. My technique is a result of your technique; my movement is a result of your movement.

The most able seems clumsy.

No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.

The more technique there is, the less there is

The better you get, the less you run around showing off as a muscle guy. You know, you wear regular shirts-not always trying to show off what you have. You talk less about it. It's like you have a little BMW - you want to race the hell out of this car, because you know it's just going 110. But if you see guys driving a Ferrari or a Lamborghini, they slide around at 60 on the freeway because they know if they press on that accelerator they are going to go 170. These things are the same in every field.

Life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

Learn it all, then forget it all.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language; the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

It is in self-limitation that a master first shows himself.

Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.

The master proves himselin recognizing his limitations.

One can have no more mastery over the environment, than one has over himself.

A good counter needs no calculator.

Disciples be damned. It's not interesting. It's only the masters that matter. Those who create.

Build up virtue, and you master all.

In the Universe the difficult things are done as if they were easy.

The masters painted for joy, and knew not that virtue had gone out of them. They could not paint the like in cold blood. The masters of English lyric wrote their songs so. It was a fine efflorescence of fine powers.

Softness triumphs over hardness, feebleness over strength. What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immoveable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation.

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own.