control

Talk uses up ideas. ... Once I have spoken them aloud they are lost to me dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them like bulbs in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.

Who is apt on occasion to assign a multitude of reasons when one will do? This is a sure sign of weakness in argument.

Without discipline there's no life at all.

Man who man would be must rule the empire of himself.

Self-command is the main elegance.

Immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret reveries that you were born to control affairs.

I'm simply interested in what is going to happen next. I don't think I can control my life or my writing. Every other writer I know feels he is steering himself, and I don't have that feeling. I don't have that sort of control. I'm simply becoming. I'm startled that I became a writer.

If you can't control your peanut butter, you can't expect to control your life.

Don't give advice unless you're asked.

For fast-acting relief try slowing down.

Never eat more than you can lift.

Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

Anger ... it's a paralyzing emotion ... you can't get anything done. People sort of think it's an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling _ I don't think it's any of that _ it's helpless ... it's absence of control _ and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers ... and anger doesn't provide any of that _ I have no use for it whatsoever."[Interview with CBS radio host Don Swaim, September 15, 1987.]

We have only minimal control over the rewards for our work and effort - other people__ validation, recognition, rewards. It__ far better when doing the work itself is sufficient. When fulfilling our own internal standards is what fills us with pride and self-respect. The less attached we are to the outcomes, the better. Our ego wants recognition & compensation. We have expectations. Let the effort, not the results be enough. Maybe your parents/kids/partner/etc won__ be impressed. We can__ let THAT be what motivates us. We can change the definition of success to: __eace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to do your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming._ With this definition we decide not to let externals determine if something is worth doing. It__ on us.

Throwing down your staff is letting go and letting God. And that's counterintuitive for those of us who are control freaks. As our executive pastor Joel Schmidgall likes to say, "You can have faith or you can have control, but you cannot have both." If you want God to do something off the chart, you have to take your hands off the controls.