Character is built little by little, over days, weeks, months, and years, with thousands of small and seemingly insignificant acts of discipline.
The great acts of love are done by those who are habitually performing small acts of kindness.
What is needed, however, isn't just that people working together be nice to each other. It is discipline. Discipline is hard--harder than trustworthiness and skill and perhaps even than selflessness. We are by nature flawed and inconstant creatures. We can't even keep from snacking between meals. We are not built for discipline. We are built for novelty and excitement, not for careful attention to detail. Discipline is something we have to work at.
You can't be consistently fair, consistently generous, consistently just, or consistently merciful. You can be anything erratically, but to be that thing time after time after time, you have to have courage.
Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
I have always worked consistently, even in small ways and even in smaller theaters where I'll do One Acts or something.
Most acts of assent require far more courage than most acts of protest, since courage is clearly a readiness to risk self-humiliation.
Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.
The commonplace expression that life is nothing but a play is verified above all in this: the world speaks absolutely consistently in one way and acts absolutely consistently in another.
We become just by the practice of just actions, self-controlled by exercising self-control, and courageous by performing acts of courage.
Summoning up the courage to take action is always the same regardless of how seemingly big or small the challenge. What may look like a small act of courage is courage nonetheless. The important thing is to be willing to take a step forward.
The best-regulated home is always that in which the discipline is the most perfect, and yet where it is the least felt. Moral discipline acts with the force of a law of nature.
Discipline is the foundation upon which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.
Discipline is the bridge between thought and accomplishment. Discipline comes to those with the awareness that for a kite to fly it must rise against the wind; that all good things are achieved by those who are willing to swim upstream; that drifting aimlessly through life only leads to bitterness and disappointment." And then he added: "Discipline is the foundation on which all success is built. Lack of discipline inevitably leads to failure.
The rigor and discipline we use in running our business is key to consistently executing our growth strategy. And we systematically applied the same discipline to our investments, including acquisitions.
Success is created through the performance of a few small daily disciplines that stack up over time to produce achievements far beyond anything you could of ever planned for. Failure, on the other hand, is just as easy to slip into. Failure's is nothing more than the inevitable outcome of a few small acts of daily neglect performed consistently over time so that they take you past the point of no return.