Epictetus Quotes

It wasn't until I had been writing on and off for maybe ten years that I started to establish any kind of routine, thought I couldn't put a finger on an exact date, and this routine relates simply to the aphorism 'How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.'

God has equipped you to handle difficult things. In fact, He has already planted the seeds of discipline and self-control inside you. You just have to water those seeds with His Word to make them grow!

I'm a strong believer that you practice like you play, little things make big things happen.

My life is training.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

I have learned that I really do have discipline, self-control, and patience. But they were given to me as a seed, and it's up to me to choose to develop them.

My philosophy when I trained was to be 1% better every day.

Every actor must go through the process of learning and not just be in a hurry to become famous. They should learn to live in small amounts and not to try and copy others.

The thing is that oftentimes, we want to be everything all at once. We want to be strong and mature, and God wants that for us, too. But just like that flowerpot had to sit in the sun and receive water day after day, we have to sit in God's presence every day, too.

It's what you practice in private that you will be rewarded for in public.

Martial arts has just made me a better person. It's a way of life.

You can often help others more by correcting your own faults than theirs. Remember, and you should, because of your own experience, that allowing God to correct your faults is not easy. Be patient with people, wait for God to work with them as He wills.

External practices have value only as helps to develop internal purity.

I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

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.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating. But I carried that with me for the rest of my life.

It is the duty and high privilege of every human being to endeavor to improve himself. Effort at self-improvement is the definition sometimes given for religion. It may relate to our actions or to our convictions. In our actions we should aim at goodness; in our convictions, at truth.

I'm not some crazy party animal. That's OK. If you say you want to be the best, you have to do what the best do - train, research, eat right, take care of yourself, and be. Don't pretend.

The men who succeed are the efficient few. They are the few who have the ambition and will power to develop themselves.

Although in skating you compete with other people, anyone who achieves a certain level of success is first and foremost competing against themselves. And for me, the idea that I could always do better, learn more, learn faster, is something that came from skating.

Depending on what they are, our habits will either make us or break us. We become what we repeatedly do.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

Patience can't be acquired overnight. It is just like building up a muscle. Every day you need to work on it.

A man needs to look, not down, but up to standards set so much above his ordinary self as to make him feel that he is himself spiritually the underdog.

How well I walk my talk, and not talk my talk, determines the quality of my engagement, of all my experience with what is quite personally my God. I'm my greatest teacher, and within me, I have the power to push myself deeper and higher.