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"If I simply let go of a character defect – release it – my Higher Power will replace it with a character asset. As I release anger, I find that I am friendlier. As I release hate, I become more loving. As I release fear, I become more secure."

"Everyone must agree that we AAs are unbelievably fortunate people; fortunate that we have suffered so much; fortunate that we can know, understand and love each other so supremely well ... Indeed most of us are well aware that these are rare gifts which have their true origin in our kinship born of a common suffering and a common deliverance by the Grace of God."

"I am learning, when looking for signs of spiritual awakening in myself, to look, not for bright lights or emotional upheavals ... but for sobriety, stability, responsibility, meaning, satisfaction, joy. These are the marks of the beginning of spiritual awakening."

"It's important to monitor my thinking, to be conscious of what thoughts I'm hugging to my heart, inviting to stay in my mind, encouraging to hang around my head."

"The beginning of maturing for me was becoming willing to try to face the realities of my own life, a day at a time, and letting go of my childhood fantasies of living happily ever after in a perfect world made up of perfect people."

"Not until I became aware that God's delay is not necessarily God's denial of prayer, was I willing to let a Power greater than myself determine how and when I was to receive the things I truly needed, rather than the things for which I howled."

"The temporary or seeming good can often be the deadly enemy of the permanent best."

"Hope is tremendous progress for someone who once was 'hopeless.'"

"I borrowed others' faith for a long time, and now I'm beginning to get a bit of my own."

"My stability came out of trying to give, not out of demanding that I receive."

"Through our failures and trials we get the opportunity to soundly test our merits and virtues."

"Whereas I used to function at two speeds – fast and stopped – a daily fix of meditation averages those two extremes out to a more gentle and efficient cruise rate."

"Whether it was pouring coffee in my home group, or going on a Twelfth-Step call, I entered a new pattern of thinking: I thought not only about myself, but about others."

"We need to constantly scrutinize ourselves carefully, in order to make everlastingly certain that we shall always be strong enough and single-purposed enough from within, to relate ourselves rightly to the world without."

"Often in sobriety, I've prayed when I needed to meditate. I've yammered at God so much that God can't get a word in edgewise.  (What I practice with people, I cannot help but practice with God.) To me, meditation is simply being quiet and listening for a change. It is buttoning up my lip – and my mind that yaps even when my mouth is shut."