Karl Marlantes Quotes

One of the important things about temptation is, if I'm going to deal with it I'm going to have to recognize, this is an area of weakness in my life. I have been tempted here before and before and before.

Happiness is dependent on self-discipline. We are the biggest obstacles to our own happiness. It is much easier to do battle with society and with others than to fight our own nature.

I'm fighting against my will to control. I think that is what I am doing. I would like to accept things in life, in all matters of life I would like to accept, but it's so difficult. I think we all have this struggle.

I recognize myself to a lesser or greater extent in everything I read, good and bad, and that's part of being a human being if you're honest enough. And obviously the darker parts are the things you don't let control you.

I'd prefer to be good, but I'm not always. I struggle.

Most of us actually stifle enough good impulses during the course of a day to change the current of our lives.

Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.

Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we've strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that's like, and we resist it - so as not to feel like we're bad people.

There's a victory, and defeat; the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeats which each man gains or sustains at the hands not of another, but of himself.

Probably I have more phobias, fear and eccentricities than I would care to admit. I don't think I'm in danger of losing my mind, but I do often question my own behavior. I have a very bad temper, and it's not always healthy for me and for others. I make my way in the world more difficult, and I could do with a little more yoga.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.

You've got to know what your 'thing' is, and you've got to call it a 'thing,' whether it's meanness, nastiness, un-forgiveness, arrogance, ego, resistance, rebelliousness or defiance. Everybody's got a 'thing,' and once you call your 'thing' a 'thing,' we can give it a place to be or dismiss it.

It's easy to point out the evil in other people, but that can be found in all of us. That selfishness, that is something we all have in us. Sometimes you are successful at dealing with it, and sometimes you are not.

When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.

Good people struggle against what's imperfect about them. The people that we call 'bad' people embrace that kind of stuff, embrace the darker side.

I have a mean streak and I am capable of cruelty. This does not mean that I am necessarily mean and cruel; instead, it means that I have to be vigilant about my capacity for cruelty and the mean bone in my body.

If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self.

The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worst part of oneself.

I am always with myself, and it is I who am my tormentor.

I am my own heaven and hell!

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good...Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is.

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.

It is always more difficult to fight one's own failings than the power of an adversary.

People always say be true to yourself. But that’s misleading, because there are two selves. There’s your short term self, and there’s your long term self. And if you’re only true to your short term self, your long term self slowly decays.