Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.
Bill W.Read
No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it
Interpretation
Even in the face of great personal adversity, one can find a way to create something valuable and meaningful.
This quote suggests that while personal crises can feel overwhelming and devastating, there is always the potential to transform those experiences into something positive or significant. It emphasizes resilience and the human capacity to learn and grow from hardship, turning pain into purpose.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage people facing life challenges.
Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.
It must never be forgotten that the purpose of Alcoholics Anonymous is to sober up alcoholics. There is no religious or spiritual requirement for membership. No demands are made on anyone. An experience is offered which members may accept or reject. That is up to them.
Almost without exception alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.
Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.
Step aside from all thinking, and there is nowhere you can't go.
...maybe a damned good night's sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity. But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it's all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can't put it straight, don't want to. Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones.
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
One of my greatest pleasures in my writing has come from the thought that perhaps my work might annoy someone of comfortably pretentious position. Then comes the realization that such people rarely read.
It seems to me that everyone on this planet whom I know or have worked with is suffering from self-hatred and guilt to one degree or another. The more self-hatred and guilt we have, the less our lives work. The less self-hatred and guilt we have, the better our lives work, on all levels.
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