Addiction | Addiction Recovery | Addiction Treatment | Codependency

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