You come, now, to the study of self-control, through which you may direct your enthusiasm to constructive ends. Without self-control enthusiasm resembles the unharnessed lighting of an electrical storm—it may strike anywhere; it may destroy life and property.
Enthusiasm is the vital quality that arouses you to action, while self-control is the balance wheel that directs your action so that it will build up and not tear down.
To be a person who is well “balanced,” you must be a person in whom enthusiasm and self-control are equalized. A survey which I have just completed of the 160,000 adult inmates of the penitentiaries of the United States discloses the startling fact that ninety-two per cent of these unfortunate men and women are in prison because they lacked the necessary self-control to direct their energies constructively.
~ Napoleon Hill, The Law of Success
