"If you share your pain you cut it in half, if you don't you double it." "If you don't want what we have, go back out to what you had." "There's no elevator, you have to take the steps." "AA is not for people who need it, it's for people who want it." "Part of compliance is defiance, but you must arrive at acceptance of the disease." "I'm an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." "My head is like a bad neighborhood and I shouldn't go in there alone." "Religion is for people who are afraid they'll go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there." "I'm not going to give anybody free rent in my head." "I was hopelessly dopeful...now I'm dopelessly hopeful." "I used to be a hopeless dope fiend, now I'm a dopeless hope fiend." "I need to put things in perspective because I have a disease of perception." "An alcoholic is chosen to find God." "The quality of your recovery is proportional to the quality of your surrender." "I'm a W.C.S. person. That's Worst Case Scenario." "I'm basically a negative person, that's why I'm so happy." "Untreated alcoholism without the steps on a daily basis will make my past my future." "Uncover...Discover...Discard." "Those who relapse are attending powerlessness graduate school." "This program changes the way I relate to me. That's what I'm trying to do, change the way I relate to me." "If you commit suicide you're killing the wrong person." "If you're not moving away from a drink you're moving closer to it." "I've been beating up on myself so much I feel like hitting myself." "A critic is a person who goes onto the battlefield after the battle has been fought and shoots the survivors." "AA is not a program to get sober...it's a program to live your life successfully and to be happy once you get sober." "I'd never trade my worst day sober for my best day drunk." "Being an alcoholic does not give me the excuse to act alcoholically." "I worked my using hard, so now I want to work my sobriety hard." "The shortest sentence in the Big Book is, "It Works." "The power behind me is greater than the problem in front of me." "When you're in fear you're not in faith." "A fear faced is a fear erased." "Every time I draw a sober breath I'm like a fish out of water." "I was a scream in search of a mouth." "I didn't make it all the way to the beach to drown in the sand." "Drinking gave me the illusion that I might be alive." (Chekhov, Uncle Vanya) "I am one drink away from never being sober again for the rest of my life." "Praying is asking God for help, meditating is listening for God's answer." "The reason I'm here is because I'm not all there." "Put your chip under your tongue and if it dissolves you can take another drink." "My biggest problem was bottles of the two-legged variety." "My basic problem is that I flee from those who want me and I pursue the rejectors." "When I live in the past, I live in regret. When I live in the future, I live in fear. When I stay in the NOW, everything's always okay." (from Joan T.) "If I could drink socially I'd get drunk every night." "There's no speeding in the trudging zone." "Having a resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die." "Courage is fear in action." "Had the eyes no tears, the soul would have no rainbow." (from Teresa) "God will heal your broken heart, if you will give Him all the pieces." (from Teresa) "My life hereafter is from this moment on." "We are attracted to people who share in our growth and progress and lose interest in those who don't." "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." (Ambrose Redmoon) "Self will imprisoned me far more than bars ever did." "I've definitely got the "ism" in alcoholism...that's incredibly short memory." "I had to learn how to float in this program because I'm a sinker." On relapse: "I never did anything in moderation...except maybe the steps." "Bring the body and the mind follows." "It's not the load that breaks you down...it's the way you carry it." "When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is still an evil." (Max Lerner) "If everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane." "Go often to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition." "Seven days without a meeting makes one weak." (from Herb B.) Regarding hanging out at bars: "If you hang out at the barbershop long enough you're bound to get a haircut." (from Bill G.) On relapse: "I never did anything in moderation...especially the steps." "Bring the body and the mind follows." "Tomorrow's a fantasy and yesterday's gone...there's only today." "Thank you, God, for the beautiful day I'm going to have if I can just get rid of my fucking attitude." "We're sick people trying to get better, not bad people trying to be good." "When you've got one foot in yesterday and the other in tomorrow, you can only piss on today." (from Steve and Anjanette) "The only way to have gratitude is to live in the now, not in the past or the future." "I didn't get my life back in this program...I got my life for the first time." "I never had a problem that was worse than the old solution I found for it." "What other people think of you is none of your business." "If it wasn't for denial my life would be shit." "Change only happens when the pain of holding on is greater than the fear of letting go." "An expectation is a premeditated resentment." "I used to shoot up and throw up, now I suit up and show up." (David F.) "If you can't love everybody today, at least try not to hurt anybody." "The reasonable person adapts to society. An unreasonable person adapts society." (Terry M.) "Give us the fortitude to endure the things which cannot be changed, and the courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to know one from the other." (Oliver J. Hart) "If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter." "Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." (Mark Twain) "My sobriety depends on who God is, not who I am." (Duane M.) "You cannot save your ass and your face at the same time." (Dennis K.) "Cash register honesty is easier than being honest with yourself, because at least you know the rules." (Ginger) "Acceptance without gratitude is bullshit." "You're not responsible for your disease, but you are responsible for your behavior." "If you don't want what we have, we will cheerfully refund your misery." "Have a nice day unless you've made other plans." "If you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it." "Now that I'm sober I hit my knees in a different way than I used to." (Jay) "Work to become, not to acquire." (Elbert Hubbard) Regarding believing in God: "Pretend. Act as if. Fake it until you make it." "Don't be afraid to take a big step. You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps." (David Lloyd George) On the hopelessness of addiction from somebody who is still using: "I used to think there was light at the end of the tunnel, but for me today the light is on a locomotive headed right for me." The value of the average conversation could be enormously improved by the constant use of four simple words: "I do not know." (Andre Maurois) "Living our pre-AA active daily lifestyle was akin to switching seats on the Titanic." "You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust your sails." "Yes, you can be a dreamer and a doer too, if you will remove one word from your vocabulary: impossible." (Robert Schuller) "If triangles had a God, he would have 3 sides." (Montesquieu) "Everyone is kneaded out of the same dough but not baked in the same oven." (Yiddish proverb) "Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time." (Robert Schuller) "Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present." (Albert Camus) "Behaviorism is the art of pulling habits out of rats." (O'Neill) "The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches, but reveal to them their own." (Disraeli) "The worst of all deceptions is self-deception." (Plato) "Whenever you fall, pick something up." (Oswald Avery) "If you continually give you will continually have." "He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds." (Emerson) "It is easier to get forgiveness than permission." (Cecile Stewart) "Fear knocked on my door...I opened it and there was nobody there." "Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it." The most important word in the Steps is the first one... "WE" "The world ain't gonna kiss my butt just because I'm getting sober." "My mind is out to get me." "A recovering alcoholic without a sponsor is much like leaving Dracula in charge of the blood bank." "Relapse starts long before the drink is drunk." "First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes the man." The secret to long term sobriety: Don't drink, don't die. "If from the skies fall lemons, make lemonade." (Gabriel G.) "Don't let the limits of your imagination block you from what God can do for you." (Suzanne) "Angels fly because they take themselves so lightly." "I have a very high pain threshold and a very low fear threshold." "I always look for the hardest way to do the easiest thing." (Jay M.) "If you don't grow, you go." "If you don't hear what you need to hear, say what you need to hear." "we shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time..." (T.S. Elliot) "Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory." (Betty Smith) "Nothing contributes more to peace of soul than having no opinion at all." (George Christopher Lichtenberg) "We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world." (Helen Keller) "Fear is a darkroom for developing negatives." "I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate." (Elbert Hubbard) "A smooth sea never made a skillful sailor." "When you starve with a tiger, the tiger starves last." (Griffin's Thought) "While I'm in a meeting, my disease is out in the parking lot doing push-ups." (Mike M.) "When I moved in sobriety, I went to the meetings and thought,'Oh, you do things differently here...i.e., wrong.'" (Mike M.) "Laziness is no more than the habit of resting before you get tired." (Jules Renard) "Democracy is where you can say what you think even if you don't think." "It is not length of life, but depth of life." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) Two step formula for handling stress: 1. Don't sweat the small stuff. 2. Remember that it's all small stuff. (Anthony Robbins) "The world is made for people who aren't cursed with self-awareness." (the character Annie Savoy in the film Bull Durham) "Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf." (American Indian Proverb) "When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail." (Abraham Maslow) Deja Fu: The feeling that somehow, somewhere, you've been kicked in the head like this before. "A day without sunshine is like night." "He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead." ON HUMILITY: "To err is human, to moo bovine." ON PROPHECY: "The meek shall inherit the earth -- they are too weak to refuse." "People that don't go to meetings, don't hear about what happens to people that don't go to meetings." (Phil A.) "You can't think your way into right living...you have to live your way into right thinking." (Pat H.) "If you're not enjoying this program, maybe you're not working it right." (Pat H.) "If you find working the steps too hard, try living them instead...that's where the real joy in the program lies." (Pat H.) "If you wanna make God laugh, tell him YOUR plans for the day." (Bob B.) "United we stand; divided we stagger." "Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you." (Andre Gide) "If you truly want to understand something, try to change it. " (Kurt Lewin) "He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over." "He who no's himself is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened." "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." (Winston Churchill) "There is an easy answer to your problem that is neat, plausible, and wrong." "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." (Antoine de Saint-Exup'ery) "Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation." "Nervousness is just God trying to shake the truth out of you." "Belief without action is the ruin of the soul." (Edward Abbey) "He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough." "I have often regretted my speech, never my silence." "Our defects of character are the bars of a cage. The central point is not to study the bars, but to get out of the cage." "Recovery is a journey between two stations. One station represents total chaos, and the other represents total serenity. What is important is not where you are, but what direction you are facing." Life without recovery: Even roses have thorns. Life in recovery: Even thorns have roses. "If you do not know where you are going, then any road will take you there." (David L.) "The slogans work much better for me when I decorate my life with them rather than decorating the walls with them." (Jenn K.) "The most natural state of an alcoholic is irritable, restless, and discontented." "We are human BEings, not human DOings." "Recognizing someone else's human dignity cannot cost you your own." "I'd rather have a frontal lobotomy than a bottle in front of me." "If you don't want what we have, your misery can be refunded." "Funny...I ruined my health by drinking to other's!" "Don't Entertain The Thought." "Progress Not Perfection." "The chains of alcohol are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken." "I didn't get into trouble every time I drank, but every time I got into trouble I was drinking. "Happiness is not a place you arrive at, it is a way you travel." "The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." (Marcel Proust) "Is it not better to aim your spear at the moon and strike only an eagle, than to aim your spear at the eagle, and strike only a rock?" "If your ass falls off, put it in a paper bag and take it to a meeting." "If my brain didn't need me for transportation, it would have killed me a long time ago!" "If you're not a lion tamer, don't go into the lion's den." "You can't speed up your recovery, but you sure can slow it down." "If I don't let go, I lose my grip." "If God is your co-pilot, SWITCH SEATS!" "It's 11:00, do you know where your brain is?" "Talk does not cook rice." New York Steps 1, 2, and 3: "I can't, He can, so let Him!" "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." "We'll love you until you learn to love yourself." "Don't give up before the miracle happens." "Unless I accept my virtues, I will be overwhelmed with my faults." "Pray daily, God is easier to talk to than most people." "Willpower tells me I must, but willingness tells me I can." "Emotions aren't facts." "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less." "If GOD drives you out, BOOZE will bring you back." "You can't think your way into a new way of living...you have to live your way into a new way of thinking!" "No God, no peace...Know God, know peace." "It's not the yets we have to worry about, it's the again's." "Rejection is God's protection." INTIMACY = In-to-me-I-see "ME + U is a power greater than ME. U + US is a power greater than U." "Winners do what they have to do and losers do what they want to do." "It is easier to stay sober than to get sober." "My anxiety is in my indecision." "Whatever you put before your sobriety; you shall surely lose." "Why put off today, what you can put off tomorrow." "He who fails to plan, plans to fail." "Anything worth doing well, is well worth overdoing." "Nothing changes if nothing changes." "Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?" "The only weapon that becomes sharper with constant use is the tongue." "Nothing is so strong as gentleness, and nothing is so gentle as true strength." (Ralph Sockman) "Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is." (Thomas Szasz) "To gain that worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else." (Bernadette Devlin) "The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism." "Do not condemn the judgement of another because it differs from your own. You may both be wrong." (Dandemis) "Reputation: what others are not thinking about you." "The only time you don't fail is the last time you try anything - and it works. (William Strong) "It's not a matter of where you stand but in what direction you're headed." "May you live all the days of your life." (Jonathan Swift) "He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over." "When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty." (George Bernard Shaw) "Don't mistake pleasure for happiness. They're a different breed of dog." (Josh Billings) "Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise." (Lord Chesterfield) "Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you're swinging." (Duke Snider) "If you judge, investigate." (Seneca) "You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." (Mark Twain) "Friendship is like money, easier made than kept." (Samuel Butler) "The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there." (Robert M. Pirsig) "I'm not much, but I'm all I think about." "Don't let the urgent get in the way of the important." "People who relapse usually do so because they accepted the things they could have changed." "AA is not for people who need it. AA is not for people who want it. AA is for people who do it." "If you don't drink--you are having a good day, even if you are too dumb to know it." "Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar." "Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for kindness." (Seneca) "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. (Leo Tolstoy) "The Road to recovery is ALWAYS under Construction." (Geoff P.) "Alone I am nothing, but together God and I make a majority!" (St. Theresa) "The impossible is often the untried." (Jim Goodwin) "A man who is 'of sound mind' is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key." (Paul Valery) "If you are having trouble keeping your head above water, you probably aren't on your toes." (Liguorian) "Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian." (Dennis Wholey) "One hundred percent of the shots you don't take don't go in." (Wayne Gretzky) "Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress." (Thomas A. Edison) "Statistics are used as a drunk uses lampposts--for support, not illumination." "Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be." (Abraham Lincoln) "Always remember that you are unique. Just like everyone else." "I only have one character defect left ... and it's just that I think about myself damn near all the time." "If you think you are an AA watchdog, just remember that watchdogs have to bark and bite." "There are no stupid questions, only stupid answers." "My life is none of my business. I just suit up and show up and do what is in front of me to do and let God take care of the results." "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." (Nelson Mandela - A Long Walk to Freedom) "Conscience is the inner voice warning us that someone may be looking." (H.L. Mencken) "God respects us when we work and loves us when we sing." "Inch by inch it's a cinch; yard by yard it's hard." (Alesia) "While I'm waiting for my ship to come in I'll probably be at the airport" (Alesia) "Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, Today is a gift from God - That's why it's called the present." (Alesia) "If you're coasting, you're going downhill." (Alesia) "Pray as if it's all up to God, work as if it's all up to you." (Alesia) "AA may not open the gates of heaven and let me in, but it sure opened the gates of hell and let me out." (Alesia) "Religion is man-made, god isn't." (Alesia) "The same person will drink." (Alesia) "Not drinking is a symptom of my recovery." "To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour. (Robert L. Stevenson) "Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) "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) "The whole point of getting things done is knowing what to leave undone." (Stella, Lady Reading) "The only meeting you're ever late for is your first AA meeting." "I'm not much, but I'm all I think about." "Those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers." "There never was night that had no morn." (Dinah Mulock Craik) “Meeting makers make it.” “They told me that giving was living, and living was loving, and loving was God.” “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.” (John F. Kennedy) "You can go nowhere from where you are not." "Life acquires meaning when we face the conflict between our desires and reality."  (Deng Ming-Dao) “Courage is fear that has said a prayer.” "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." (Thoreau) “If you don't care where you are, then you ain't lost.” “Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.” (Japanese proverb) “The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.” (Eden Phillpotts) “Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.” (William Saroyan) “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” “To oppose something is to maintain it.” (Ursula K. LeGuin) “Contempt is the weapon of the weak and a defense against one's own despised and unwanted feelings.” (Alice Miller) “This is the final test of the gentleman: his respect for those who can be of no possible service to him.” (William Lyon Phelps) “The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one.”  (Elbert Hubbard) “Happiness depends, as Nature shows, less on exterior things than most suppose.” (William Cowper) “Failure is only postponed success as long as courage "coaches" ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory.” (Herbert Kaufman) “He who is outside the door has already a good part of his journey behind him.” (Dutch Proverb) “Conditions are never just right. People who delay action until all factors are favorable do nothing.” (William Feather) “We win half the battle when we make up our minds to take the world as we find it, including the thorns.” (Orison S. Marden) "Life acquires meaning when we face the conflict between our desires and reality." (Deng Ming-Dao) “You can't carry a board 360 feet long, but you can carry a one foot board a day at a time.” “Life isn't fair, life isn't just, life is just what it is.” “If you're not in the market for a bicycle don't hang around in a bicycle shop.” “Why me? Why not me?” “There are no single truths, there are only simple truths.” “Quality Sobriety...I used to let others tell me about mine. Today I know it for myself.” “Sober is being comfortable with myself out of control. When I am in control, I am not sober.” “God won't give me more today than I can handle, but He didn't count on me piling on yesterday and tomorrow.” “I thought that I was The Captain of my Fate, and the Master of my Soul. What I found out was that when I was drinking I was a menace to Navigation.” “The insanity of this disease is that I kept getting drunk. Then I'd be drunk and insane.” “Since it is One Day At A Time, then whoever awoke the earliest today has the most sobriety.” “I thought Easy Does It was counting to ten before hitting someone.” “I was a Periodic Drinker. I drank, period.” “Misery is optional.” “Getting sober by any means possible must include love.” “There are things more painful than the truth, but I can't think of any.” “I finally got into recovery when the unknown became more acceptable than the known.” “When I look into a mirror, I take a good look, because this is the guy that got me here.” “AA won't solve my problems, It will help keep me sober to work on them.” “If I drink, there are three doors to choose from; bad, worse and terrible.” “The man I was will always drink. I need to change.” “People didn't recruit me for this program, alcohol did; and it did a good job.” “I had alcoholic amnesia. I forgot everything but my enemies.” “When I am being here now, I don't have to cover up anything.” “If you don't like the Program, we will refund your misery.” “When the Program doesn't work, am I still negotiating the terms of my surrender.” “If your life worked so well, what are you doing here now?” “My drug of choice was actually a drug of No Choice.” “Life is too short to be small.” “Whatever you do may be very insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “I have the problem of trying to understand my insides by means of thinking without experience.” “Believe only half of what you hear. And after you have been around awhile, you will know which half.” “This is a Positive Program for Negative people.” “Most alcoholics are great talkers. But the Program is about ACTION.” “Failure isn't in falling down, it's in failing to get back up.” “I am not interested in the truth, I leave that to God and my sponsor. I'm only interested in the momentary facts of things.” “My sponsor taught me that I am not the con man. I am the mark.” “We need trust to combat fear.” “A Captain of a ship needs a crew. Accept the help of others.” “The healthy person finds happiness in helping others. Thus, for him unselfishness is selfish. We don't have something until we have built up enough to be able to give some away.” “Hope is the feeling you have that the feeling you have isn't permanent.” “Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you didn't have a sponsor or worked the Steps. But I repeat myself.” “I must remember that the power within me far exceeds the fear in front of me.” “The trouble with many recovering people is that they are bigger pain the second time around.” “It is only possible to live happily ever after on a day to day basis.” “Most alcoholics would rather die than learn about themselves. In fact they do.” “A person who doesn't work The Steps has no advantage over the person who can't work them.” “It was natural for me to drink-just like birds swim and fish fly, I drank.” “As an alcoholic it was natural for me to talk out of both sides of my mouth at the same time-and to lie out of the other side.” “I don't yet know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.” “Responsibility - I didn't want it. It was thrust upon me by birth.” “When nothing in my world seems to measure up, there is something wrong with the yardstick.” “Acceptance is realizing that one of the things I cannot change is the truth of the Serenity Prayer.” “Serenity is not the absence of disturbance, it is being okay with that disturbance.” “We are here to confront ourselves through the eyes and hearts of others.” “Do I believe that I can give out one kind of behavior and yet receive another?” “If you can't get what you want, learn to want what you get.” “Remember yourself as the whole person you are and accept yourself as you are.” “Rust never sleeps. Will I accept that or will I resent it?” “Serenity isn't freedom from the storm; it is peace within the storm.” “Some things have to be believed to be seen.” “The worst thing about some Grateful Recovering Alcoholics is that they are no longer drunk and are now sober.” “An alcoholic was someone I didn't like because he drank as much as I did.” “Life is not a dress rehearsal.” “A little kid will take your hand and enjoy whatever happens. How did I get from being that little kid to believing that I was the Chairman of the Universe?” “Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want.” “A loss in life is not a loss of life. It doesn't hurt to try.” “Alcoholism is learned inadequate responses to life's problems.” “What are you doing suffering someone else's pain?” “My whole being is denial and addiction. What would happen if I took all that energy and aimed at sobriety?” “The Program is a tool box; it is up to me to take the tools out and use them.” “If you think life's lessons are hard, try addiction.” “Letting go is always taught at meetings. Look at all the idiotic behavior we encounter.” “You either face the issue or you face destruction.” A Prayer: “Thank you God for all you have given me, for all you have taken away from me, and for all you have left me.” “With my self-image I had little going for me, plus some less.” “You have the right to act in ways that promote your dignity and self-respect as long as the rights of others are not being violated in the process.” “The two hardest things in life to handle are success and failure.” “I wanted to be proud of myself, the problem is that I chose drinking as the subject of my pride.” “Changing your dress or your name you can do easily. But changing who you are will take a lot of work.” “Sometimes recovering people must do twice as much as others to be thought of as half as good. Luckily this is not difficult.” “The Program has helped me to build a record of sobriety; but a record isn't something you stand on, it is something you grow on.” “Live your life in your heart, fill it with love, not hate.” “I've learned not to pay attention to the foolish actions of others.” “Worry is interest on fear.” “When I was drinking, I was lost in the four C's: Compare, Criticize, Compete and Condemn.” “My friends were all victims-it makes me wonder how that could happen by accident.” “The wind does not wait for the tree to bend.” “Time is natures way of keeping everything from happening at once.” “Most people lie when the truth is too tough. At sometime it will have to come out.” “A cockroach doesn't turn into a butterfly. A complete change of nature is necessary.” “The main value of Iying has yet to be discovered.” “God is closer to me than I am to myself.” “You need to be honest with God, because this is one heck of a disease and you'll need Him. Who did I think I was wanting control? It was the very thing that got me here.” “One way to lose your soul is to only worship a God outside of yourself.” “If you truly do a Third Step and turn your will over to the care of God, take a Tenth Step each day to see how He's doing.” “Trust is belief that my decisions will work. Faith is belief that the results will be beneficial.” “Real communion with God is communion with your fellow beings.” “God won't give me more today than I can handle. His list fits me, my list is as big as my ego. I'm not a drunk. I'm just naturally obnoxious, dishonest, and irresponsible.” “What kind of world would it be if it depended on my beliefs? But then I have it backwards.” “Love is wishing the other person well, and being willing to help them achieve it.” “In a relationship there is me and her and God; I have my plans for us; God has his. Guess who will win?” “God speaks through people, I used to worry about which ones.” “There are two movements in this program; one toward sobriety, and a second away from it.” “Alcohol is a solvent; it will remove everything from your life.” “Has helping another person ever been your number one priority? Have you ever wanted to help someone achieve with everything you had? Choosing to set yourself aside is genuine care and love.” “One may pretend to love, but one cannot pretend genuine care.” “No person with whom we are enamored of will be able to give us the full love we seek. Only mindless morons and pets do that.” “Minds are like parachutes they must be open to work.” “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” (Shakespeare) “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.” (Lin Yutang) “You must allow people to be right, because it consoles them for not being anything else.” (Andre' Gide) “The highest reward for a person's toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.” (John Ruskin) “First say to yourself what you would be, then do what you have to do.” (Epictetus) “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.” (Talmudic Saying) “When nothing is sure, everything is possible.” (Margaret Drabble) “Kindness is within our power, even when fondness is not.” (Samuel Johnson) “The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through.” (Harry A. Overstreet) On COMMITMENT: “Strength is a matter of the made-up mind.” (John Beecher) On CHANGE: “After you've done a thing the same way for two years, look it over carefully. After five years, look at it with suspicion. And after ten years, throw it away and start all over.” (Alfred Edward Perlman) The ABSOLUTES: “Almost always, if I measure my decision carefully by the yardsticks of absolute honesty, absolute unselfishness, absolute purity, and absolute love, and it checks up pretty well with those four, then my answer can't be very far out of the way.” (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers:54) “When you know that you don't know, then you know!” "Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have." (Burt B)