Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.

Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.

True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the profound desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God.

No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it

In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.

We know that permanent sobriety can be attained only by a most revolutionary change in the life and outlook of the individual.

Guilt is really the reverse side of the coin of pride. Guilt aims at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others.

We lose the fear of making decisions, great and small; as we realize that should our choice prove wrong we can, if we will, learn from the experience.

AA is no success story in the ordinary sense of the word. It is a story of suffering transmuted, under grace, into spiritual progress.

Almost without exception alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.

Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.

What one thinks finds expression in words, and what one says, happens.

The point to remember is that what the government gives it must first take away.

It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

Not all that is mortal is useless.

Thirty, thirty-five, forty, all had come to visit her like admonitory relatives, and all had slipped away without a trace, without a sound, and now, once again, she was waiting.

There exists above the "productive" man a yet higher species.

I'm vomiting days before I start shooting a new movie.

No, you can't go getting mad at people because they're shitty. Life will get mad at them, don't worry.

[Moralistic] novels are at the same disadvantage as teachers: children never believe them, because they make everything that happens relate to the lesson at hand.

But I like to be thought of as a good father and a good husband.