The mastery of nature is vainly believed to be an adequate substitute for self mastery.

Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.

Heaven cannot brook two suns, nor earth two masters

We are not our own masters, but instruments in the hands of the forces that created us.

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself … the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment … And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.