“I spent the first thirty years making a mess of the life I was given, the next thirty trying to figure out this simple program, and now I can try in the last thirty to loosen up, let life happen, and try to have a little fun.”
“Growing pains are never to be feared, provided I am willing to learn the truth about myself from them.”
“Practicing the Eleventh Step, along with reworking all the other Steps, has given me greater integrity and strengthened my sobriety. This is the kind of dependence I need: a healthy dependence on the Twelve Steps.”
“I may be a Loner but I am never alone spiritually. For this, I am deeply grateful.”
“As individuals, we can carry the AA experience and ideas into any outside field whatever, provided that we guard anonymity and refuse to use the AA name for money-raising or publicity purposes.”
“Spiritual fitness is required if I am to be of service to anyone.”
“Notes in the same key resonate together .... No matter how much continuous sobriety I have to my and AA’s credit, I am still only one drink away from a drunk, just like everybody else in these meeting rooms.”
“Sobriety -- freedom from alcohol -- through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps, is the sole purpose of an AA group.”
“I don’t just hear the slogans anymore; I feel them when I speak them ... They take hold of me; they change the course of my day if I let them.”
“We don't have to go to Akron, Ohio, to see Dr. Bob's memorial. Dr. Bob's real monument is visible throughout the length and breadth of AA. Let us look again at its true inscription -- one word only, which we AAs have written. That word is sacrifice.”
“A new chapter has once again started in my life -- a chapter that has no ending, a chapter that I did not write, but a chapter with many characters.”
“Without a connection to my Higher Power, I am the same old person with the same old defects, causing the same old pain in my life and others’.”
“Serenely remarking to his attendant, ‘I think this is it,’ Dr. Bob passed out of our sight and hearing November sixteenth at noonday. So ended the consuming malady wherein he had so well shown us how high faith can rise over grievous distress. As he had lived, so he had died, supremely aware that in his Father's House are many Mansions.”
“Self-justification is a universal destroyer of harmony and of love. It sets man against man, nation against nation. By it, every form of folly and violence can be made to look right, and even respectable. Of course it is not for us to condemn. We need only investigate ourselves.”
“Think, think, think before you make that angry comment or mail that bitter letter. How important is it?”
