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“Today I can look upon myself and others with understanding, acceptance, forgiveness, and love ... Recovery is a wonderland.”

“From the cradle to the grave there is always something wrong somewhere, something to rob us of enjoying perfection, something to bother us. When we put one thing right, another will surely go wrong sooner or later. So it behooves us to enjoy every minute we can, for a minute lost is a minute gone forever.”

“There are occasions for me when I am not thinking about myself and my own reactions to events or circumstances, but have my attention fully occupied by tasks, ideas, scenes, or another person. And when I recollect these occasions, I find that they have been my happiest.”

“Worry saps me of the energy that I need for today.”

“Acceptance doesn’t mean I have to condone a particular situation, it simply means I can better assess what is going on around me without the filters of my past and without comparison to what I would consider a more ideal circumstance.”

“Now that we no longer patronize bars and bordellos; now that we bring home the pay checks; now that we are so very active in AA; and now that people congratulate us on these signs of progress -- well, we naturally proceed to congratulate ourselves. Yet we may not be within hailing distance of humility. Meaning well, yet doing badly, how often have I said or thought, ‘I am right and you are wrong,’ ‘My plan is correct and yours is faulty,’ ‘Thank God your sins are not my sins,’ ‘You are hurting AA and I'm going to stop you cold,’ ‘I have God's guidance, so He is on my side.’ And so on, indefinitely.

“The alarming thing about such pride-blindness is the ease with which it is justified.”

“A sincere attempt to exercise the first ten Steps brings into play some of the finest virtues in the human character: humility, hope, faith, honesty, courage, and sincerity.”

“Keeping a Tenth Step journal about my day-to-day life, my relations with other people, and the stuff that still roiled around in my head helped me see patterns in my thoughts and behavior, which I could discuss with my sponsor. And once I began to sit quietly, reflect on what I'd written, and pray, I began to sleep peacefully for the first time in my life.”

“My understanding of a Higher Power is still subject to shifts. Sometimes, I think of it as The Unknowable, or as The Great What Is. Often, I envision it as an indifferent force, something like an electrical current, that is available to all living things and from which human beings can derive strength and generosity and acceptance. The one thing I feel sure of is that it’s more powerful than my will.”

“I can’t walk on water, but with my Higher Power and my AA friends, I can keep my head just above it.”

“We've all seen the new member who stays sober for a time, largely through sponsorship. Then maybe the sponsor gets drunk, and you know what usually happens. Left without a human prop, the new member gets drunk, too. He has been glorifying an individual, instead of following the program.

“Certainly, we need leaders, but we must regard them as the human agents of the Higher Power and not with undue adulation as individuals. The Fourth and Tenth Steps cannot be too strongly emphasized here, ‘Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves .... Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.’ There is your perfect antidote for halo-poisoning.”

“The five H's combine into a powerful formula for success. Starting with Hope, passing through Honesty into a gracious Humility, we become Human again, taking our rightful places in society and, by living a well rounded life, develop an integrated personality free of the stresses that urge us to drink. Finally, through Helpfulness we express gratitude and pass on to others some of the blessings we have enjoyed these recent weeks, months, years. Truly a Magic Formula for Continued Sobriety....”

“Worrying about a situation won’t change it. I do all that I can and then give the rest to God.”

“I have sometimes felt I must apologize for my happiness ... I am vowing, however, to give loud support to successes, not just encouraging pats to troubles and failures. I now see successful living as a natural God-given by-product of successful sobriety. I say, go for it!”

“My desire to drink became a desire not to.”