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QUOTES &
WELL SAID WORDS
Positive and insightful quotes,
affirmations and stories can be a very valuable part of a good recovery
plan. These quotes can be used as prompts for journaling, reflections in
meditation or quiet contemplation or for meeting discussion topics.
“Without
an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the
relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the
individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem alone.”
- Marion Woodman
“The
world is all gates, all opportunities, strings of tension waiting to be
struck.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The Breeze at dawn
has secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep.” - Rumi
“People
are hungry for messages of hope and life. What are you broadcasting?”
- Morgan Brittany
“You can't take
flight without looking up and letting go.” - She Who
Weaves the Web
“It is no accident at all that wheels
give us the ability to navigate with intention, direction and momentum.”
- She Who Weaves the Web
“Don't reinvent the wheel, just
realign it.” - Anthony J. D'Angelo
“Earth teach me to forget myself as
melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves
which die in the fall. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands
all alone. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the
spring.” - William Alexander
“Happiness is like a butterfly which,
when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down
quietly, may alight upon you.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Two Wolves
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a
battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son,
The battle is between two 'wolves' inside us all.
One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret,
greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment
Inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego.
The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope,
serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence,
empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."
The grandson thought about it for a minute
and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf wins?"
The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of
life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It can turn a meal into a feast, a
house into a home, a stranger into a friend. It turns denial into
acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It turns problems into
gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and
mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of
our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” -
Melody Beattie
“Things do not change; we change.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“Courage is resistance to fear,
mastery of fear - not absence of fear.” -Mark Twain
“More people would learn from
their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them.” ~Harold J. Smith
“It
is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can
sincerely try to help another without helping himself.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
“We know perfectly well how to be
spiritual. It's being human that we have trouble with.” - Renee Bledsoe
“Your financial decline will not
elevate the impoverished.” - Esther & Jerry Hicks
Ye shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free.
- John 8:32
“If you would be a real seeker after
truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far
as possible, all things.” -Rene Descartes
“If you do not tell the truth about
yourself you cannot tell it about other people.” -Virginia Woolf
"Blessed are the cracked, for they
shall let the light in.” - Groucho Marx
“If you have knowledge, let others
light their candles with it.” - Margret Fuller
“Tears are a river that takes you
somewhere. Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying
it downriver to someplace better.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“You are never given a wish without
also being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it,
however.” - Richard Bach
“Every man stamps his value on
himself... man is made great or small by his own will.” - J.C.F. von
Schiller
“Discovery consists of seeing what
everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought.” -Albert von Szent-Gyorgy
“Shame is guilt in overdrive. If it helps think of the difference
between shame and guilt as this: shame says "I'm bad, I'm flawed", guilt
says "what I did was harmful to myself and/or others, and I can do
better than that". Thoughts of healthy, unbiased guilt are how you converse with
your conscience, while feelings of shame don't even let the conversation
begin.” - Renee Bledsoe
“We move in our recovery from one addiction to another for two
major reasons: first, we have not recognized and treated the underlying
addictive process, and second, we have not accurately isolated and
focused upon the specific addictions.” - Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.
“Advice is like snow; the softer it
falls the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into, the mind.”
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
“One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most
beautiful.” - Sigmund Freud
“Your vision will become clear only
when you look into your heart... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks
inside, awakens.” -Carl Jung
“Far better it is to dare mighty
things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than
to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much
because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor
defeat.” -Theodore Roosevelt
“Nothing is predestined: The
obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new
beginnings.” -
Ralph Blum
“To find what you seek in the road of
life, the best proverb of all is that which says: "Leave no stone
unturned.” - Edward Bulwer Lytton
“Being deeply loved by someone gives
you strength;
loving someone deeply gives you courage.” - Lao Tzu
“It is a paradoxical but profoundly
true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a
goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious
goal beyond it.” -Arnold Toynbee
“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, but to create something
that will.” - Unknown
“The only way to discover the limits
of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible.” -Arthur C.
Clarke
“To invent, you need a good
imagination and a pile of junk.”
-Thomas A. Edison
“Our real duty is always found running in the direction of our
worthiest desires.” - Randolph S. Bourne
“Imagination is more important than
knowledge.” - Albert Einstein
“A moment's insight is sometimes worth
a life's experience.”
-Oliver Wendell Holmes
“Once we accept our limits, we go
beyond them.” -Albert Einstein
“The greatest minds are capable of the
greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.” -Rene Descartes
“There can be no transforming of
darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.” -Carl
Jung
“It is with our passions, as it is
with fire and water, they are good servants but bad masters.” -Aesop
“You can't separate peace from freedom
because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” -Malcolm X
“If you align the Serenity prayer onto the blueprint of the Medicine
Wheel, the part that says to accept the things I cannot change falls at the South
node. The South is the time period of the past. Therefore, the
only thing you cannot change is in the past.” - Renee Bledsoe
“After silence that which comes
nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” -Aldous Huxley
“There is no such thing as an inconsequential lie.” - Gary King
“The Five Levels of Truth-Telling:
First, you tell the truth to yourself about yourself. Then you tell the
truth to yourself about another. At the third level, you tell the truth
about yourself to another. Then you tell your truth about another to
that other. And finally, you tell the truth to everyone about
everything.” ~ Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations with God (Book 2)
“Revolution doesn’t have to do with smashing something, it has to do
with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about
that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You
have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.” - Joseph
Campbell, Man and Myth, "The Necessity of Rites"
“Spirituality is not “canned fog.” In the midst of mystery and paradox
there can be real and relevant wisdom in the Spirit of God.” - Dr. Sam
Southard
“Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only
remembers to turn on the light.” -
Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban
“Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the light, even though for
the moment you do not see.” - Bill Wilson, cofounder Alcoholics
Anonymous
Watch your thoughts; they become
words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
- Frank Outlaw
“What we see depends mainly on what we
look for.” - Sir John Lubbock
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to
one who is striking at the root.” -Henry David Thoreau
“The Light is more than some abstract, unknowable energy force. Light is
Truth. If Light is truth, then darkness must be lies. Each and every lie
we tell to ourselves and others casts the shadow of separation upon
us. Every time even the most minor deception is revealed and the truth
is made known we are re-united with the Light. So, Let there be Light.
Those are the words by which you can create your own magnificent world.”
- Renee Bledsoe
“We know truth, not only by reason,
but also by the heart.”
-Blaise Pascal (1723-1662)
“The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what
we are for what we could become.” - Charles Du Bos
“You become what you behold.”
-William Blake
“And before my Soul took me to task I
was hard of hearing;
I heard only tumult and uproar. But now I am all ears listening to the
silence and its choirs singing the hymns of time, intoning the praises
of the firmament, revealing the secrets of the invisible.” - Kahlil
Gibran
“Life is a process. We are a
process. The universe is a process.” - Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.
“'Our deepest fear is not that we are
inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It
is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves,
'who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?' Actually,
who are you not to be? You are a child of the Universe. Your playing
small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about
shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are
born to make manifest the glory of god which is within us. It is not in
just some of us, it is in all of us. And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are
liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates
others.”
- Marianne Williamson, Excerpt from "A Return to Love"
“It is possible to be different and
still be all right. There can be two -- or more -- answers to the same
question, and all can be right.” - Anne Wilson Schaef, Ph.D.
“What happens to a man is less
significant than what happens within him.” - Louis L. Mann
"As you more fully establish the
connection of your head to your heart, you will fall deeply in love with
yourself. You will love yourself, not in a narcissistic way that
is only reflected back to you from the outside world, but in a way that
comes from the inside out. It is then that you are open to loving others
in just this same way. And that is when doing harm to yourself (body,
mind and soul) or to others is not an option.” - Renee Bledsoe
“Truth is one, the sages speak of it
by many names.” - Joseph Campbell
“Tell me and I forget; show me and I remember; involve me and I
understand.” - unknown
“The best place to find a helping hand
is at the end of your own arm. - unknown
“Everyone's life is an object lesson to others.” - Karl G. Maeser
“Man is the mirror God holds up to
himself, the sense organ with which he apprehends his being.” - Carl
Jung
"We must be willing to let go of the
life we have planned,
so as to accept the life that is waiting for us.” -Joseph Campbell
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that
you didn't do than by the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain
“There is a time to let things happen, and a time to make things happen.”
- unknown
To everything there is a season,
a time for every purpose under the sun.
A time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal ...
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance ...
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to lose and a time to seek;
a time to rend and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
“There’s nothing you can do that’s
more important than being fulfilled. You become a sign, you become a
signal, transparent to transcendence; in this way, you will find, live,
and become a realization of your own personal myth.” ~Joseph Campbell
“The men who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than
those who try to do nothing and succeed.” - Lloyd Jones
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what
happens to him.”
- Aldous Huxley
“One hundred percent of the shots you don't take don't go in.”
- Wayne Gretzky
“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase,
just take the first step.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“The more often a man feels without acting, the less he'll be able to
act. And in the long run, the less he'll be able to feel.”
- C.S. Lewis
“If I am not for myself, who will be? And if I am for myself alone, then
what am I? And if not now, when?”
- Rabbi Hillel, Pirke Avot 1:14
For all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these,
'It might have been'.
- John Greenleaf Whittier
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” - Mahatma
Gandhi
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the
world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
- Margaret Mead
“And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life
in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln
“Happiness is not a destination. It is a method of life.” - Burton Hills
“Luck is when opportunity knocks, and you answer.” - unknown
“Example sheds a genial ray which men are apt to borrow,
so first improve yourself today, and then your friends tomorrow.” -
unknown
“Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter.” -Martin Luther King Jr.
“Your thoughts are the architects of your destiny.” - David O. McKay
“Men's natures are alike, it is their
habits that carry them far apart.” - Confuscious
“The components of anxiety, stress,
fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They
simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about
them as if they do.” - Dr. Wayne Dyer
“All our philosophy is as dry as dust
if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service.” -
Mahatma Gandhi
“Environment is of supreme
importance. It is greater than will power.” - Paramhansa Yogananda
“When a man finds no peace within himself, it is useless to seek it
elsewhere.” - L. A. Rouchefolicauld
“The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches,
but reveal to them their own.” - Benjamin Disraeli
“The most important of life's battles is the one we fight daily in the
silent chambers of the soul.” - David O. McKay
“I do not feel obliged to believe
that the same God who had endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect
has intended us to forgo their use.” - Galileo Galilei
“Everyone has his custom, his
religion. One cannot reach so great a secret by one way alone.” - Symmachus, 384 C.E.
“I disagree with what you say, but I
will defend to the death your right to say it.” - Voltaire
“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original
dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
“Each time someone stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of
others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple
of hope.” - Robert F. Kennedy
“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to
what lies within us.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Truth always rests with the minority,
and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the
minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while
the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no
opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that
the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again
reverts to a new minority.”
- Soren Kierkegaard
“People say that what we're all
seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really
seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being
alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will
have resonances within our innermost being and reality, so that we
actually feel the rapture of being alive.” -Joseph Campbell
“Dreams are renewable. No matter what our age or condition, there are
still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty waiting to be
born.” - Dr. Dale Turner
“The biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.”
- unknown
“Everything you are against weakens
you. Everything you are for empowers you.” - Dr. Wayne Dyer
“What comes out of you when you are
squeezed is what is inside of you.” - Dr. Wayne Dyer
“Having observed the forces of all
things natural and celestial and having examined by painstaking
investigation the sympathy among those things, brings into the open
powers hidden and stored away in nature; thus, magic links lower things
(as if they were magical enticements) to the gifts of higher things...so
that astonishing miracles thereby occur.”
- Giambattista della Porta (1535-1615), Natural Magick