Francis de Sales Quotes

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience.

I work on myself daily to be a better person. When I react in a negative way to somebody, I sit back and think about why I did it, so I'm always working on myself, and my music is the same.

I think I've certainly learned a lot of lessons in humility and continue to work on that part of myself.

One of my worst fears is being a self-indulgent person.

I think when you're dealing with any issues about trying to become a better human being, you have to look at a lot of things about yourself that maybe you don't want to or aren't able to.

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life.

Even those who have the weakest souls could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them.

When I read the Bible, I see that we should have victory in our life and be overcomers, and I can't even control my temper. I'm impatient. I'm hard to get along with. I'm selfish and self-centered, and I don't seem to have any control over it.

Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot--or if you do not know how to improve on things--then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

I understood, by dint of digging into my memories, that modesty helped me to shine, humility helped me to triumph and virtue to oppress.

This unusual and highly successful species spends a great deal of time examining his higher motives and an equal amount of time ignoring his fundamental ones.

I just want to live each moment, but it's kind of hard to do that when you are asked to analyze yourself constantly. But it's also good in that you are forced to think about things that you don't ordinarily think about. I think it's strange.

I think I have more patience now than I did in the past.

I found the emotion that as an athlete you block out, and it really helped me to understand myself as a person. I'm a really emotional person and it helped make me a better person.

One can acquire everything in solitude except character.

I think I'm still a little too intense for my own good sometimes.

I might be in an airport, late or angry with a ticket person, and I'm going to sort of check myself, because part of me is seen as Eric Camden. We all need as much help as we can get. It's a role model to me as much as to anybody else.

It is better to destroy one's own errors than those of others.

Observe all men, thyself most.

To learn to know oneself, to judge oneself with truth and impartiality, must be the great objects of one's exertion; they are only attainable by constant and cool self-examination.

You get to a point where you get tired of being stupid and selfish and not being honest with yourself.

I feel proud to be a skater: it's taught me how to be emotional, more connected with myself, more mature, more understanding of my thoughts and the conversations I've had with myself.

Sometimes I think I'm a bit impatient, and a bit more patience would help me in some cases.