Melvyn Bragg Quotes

The hardest thing for me is restraint.

If we lose track when it comes to deciding when to stop, that should be a sign.

Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you need to - restraint is something I admire.

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs.

It is with our passions as it is with fire and water, they are good servants, but bad masters.

I wish I didn't like sweets as much as I do. I wish I didn't get carried away sometimes.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

Good habits, which bring our lower passions and appetites under automatic control, leave our natures free to explore the larger experiences of life. Too many of us divide and dissipate our energies in debating actions which should be taken for granted.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human nature.

I'm the worst ad anyone could possibly be for abstaining from anything.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

Those who restrain their desires, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.

I have to reign myself in a lot.

Fortunately, the Canadian people in all their habits, are essentially a temperate people.

We say no to lots of things that would please us. I would like to punch people every now and then, but I don't. I would like to have something for free rather than pay for it. I would like to skip to the front of the line... I don't mean to brush aside the taste of meat, which is a powerful attraction. But its power is not without limit.

People have got to learn: if they don't have cookies in the cookie jar, they can't eat cookies.

I never forbid myself anything.

I need to rein myself in sometimes.

It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.

I am pretty controlled I have to say.

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

A little more moderation would be good. Of course, my life hasn't exactly been one of moderation.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

No man in the world has more courage than the man who can stop after eating one peanut.