W. Somerset Maugham Quotes

While expressing your desires, you would need to exercise control in order to prevent them from doing harm to you or to others.

It is certainly much easier wholly to decline a passion than to keep it within just bounds and measures; and that which few can moderate almost anybody may prevent.

The undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions

Subdue your passion or it will subdue you.

If we resist our passions, it is more due to their weakness than our strength.

The life of a good man is a continual warfare with his passions.

The art of living consists in knowing which impulses to obey and which must be made to obey.

Self-control is only courage under another form. It may also be regarded as the primary essence of character.

Passions, as fire and water, are good servants, but bad masters, and subminister to the best and worst purposes.

A man without self-restraint is like a barrel without hoops, and tumbles to pieces.

Self-control is one of the most exhilarating of pleasures.

I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

Courage without discipline is nearer beastliness than manhood.

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

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

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

He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion.

I have to reign myself in a lot.

What makes resisting temptation difficult for many people is they don't want to discourage it completely.

Patience means restraining one's inclinations.

Temptation to behave is terrible.

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

They who overcome their desires once can overcome them always.

The hardest thing for me is restraint.

To rule one's anger is well; to prevent it is better.