Choosing joy involves spiritual surrender, and sometimes we would rather hold on to the pain than surrender our egos.
Marianne WilliamsonI think we all need to be looking to the better angels of our own selves. We don't need to be looking for great people so much as becoming great people.
Marianne WilliamsonMiracle workers learn to keep their own counsel. Something that's important to know about spiritual wisdom is that, when spoken at the wrong time, in the wrong place, or to the wrong person, the one who speaks sounds more like a fool than a wise one.
Marianne WilliamsonLove is a heroโs journey, and the heroโs journey is a noble but difficult path.
Marianne WilliamsonWe will have gone from men telling us condescendingly to not bother our pretty little heads about important things like politics, to not bothering our pretty little heads without even being told not to! The suffragettes struggled and suffered so much on our behalf; what a travesty of everything they stood for, if we simply look away as though we can't be bothered.
Marianne WilliamsonThe ego is always looking to find something. The Spirit can see what's already there.
Marianne WilliamsonWe cannot get to our knowledge because the world is too loud. And we tend to make it louder as we cry out in pain, pretending we are singing.
Marianne WilliamsonIn the Jewish religion it says - in the time of deepest darkest night act as if the morning has already come
Marianne WilliamsonIf we had the government we deserved we would have the most righteous government, because we deserve the best - everybody does.
Marianne WilliamsonI have seen so much obstructed potential among people who lack personal discipline, who just slough it off, whatever it is, and who think that nothing matters very much. I want my daughter to have what I think of as a capacity for self-discipline. Not the sort of self-discipline that diminishes her own wild passions, but that makes it safer for her to own those wild passions.
Marianne WilliamsonIf I'm honest with myself, I think it's probably true I have learned more in my life through pain than through joy. But hopefully that's changing.
Marianne WilliamsonUntil you have a child, it's very tempting to look at the state of the world and say, "To hell with it, in 50 years I won't be around anyway." But if you have a child you don't say that, because even if you're not around in 50 years, your children presumably will be, and maybe even their children. You think of yourself as responsible to future generations in a whole different way.
Marianne WilliamsonPutting love first means knowing that the universe supports you in creating the good, the holy, and the beautiful. It means knowing that you're on the earth for a purpose, and that the purpose itself will create opportunities for its accomplishment.
Marianne WilliamsonHappiness requires that we give up a worldly orientation-not worldly things, but a worldly attachment to things. We have to surrender all outcomes. We have to live here but appreciate the joke.
Marianne WilliamsonThink bigger. Forget limits. Embrace the idea of endless possibility.... It will change you.
Marianne WilliamsonThe fate of the world rests on this one thing: our capacity to actualize our spiritual potential, and quickly.
Marianne WilliamsonAccepting people as they are has the miraculous effect of helping them improve. Acceptance doesn't prohibit growth; rather, it fosters it.
Marianne WilliamsonAmerica is a great country, and we've done a lot of good in the world. But we are a collection of people, not saints. We have our own sins to atone for.
Marianne WilliamsonThe sense of endings as well as beginnings in the air is now so obvious in so many dimensions of our experience that a critical mass has been reached.
Marianne WilliamsonI do know middle age can bring greater depth, greater wisdom, greater capacity for love, greater capacity for relationship, greater consciousness and desire to serve and awareness of the fate of mankind - all these wonderful things, yes. And I know I'm getting there.
Marianne WilliamsonGod picks you up. You don't pick yourself up. You're the one who knocked you down or even if somebody else knocked you down, your willingness to believe that what they said had value, was your conspiring with them, with their effort to knock you down - I've never been able to get myself up and I've noticed that every time I ask God to pick me up - he does.
Marianne WilliamsonNo matter what mistakes we might have made yesterday, today is the day we can retrieve our innocence.
Marianne WilliamsonWhen a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her.
Marianne WilliamsonThe enlightened world will be one in which everyone is in love with everyone all the time. We will see each other as God created us: as the perfect, loving, and lovable people we really are. The purpose of romantic love is to jump-start our enlightenment.
Marianne WilliamsonThe voices of fear are so loud today. The voices of love should never shout, but neither should they whisper - not at a time like this.
Marianne Williamsonthe spiritual meaning of every situation [is] not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us and who we decide to become because of what happens to us. The only real failure is the failure to grow from what we go through.
Marianne WilliamsonForgiveness is the ultimate preventive medicine, as well as the greatest healer.
Marianne WilliamsonTo be truly seen and understood - in all our innocence and glory and yes, our brokenness, too - is to be delivered into the spiritual ethers where both seen and seer are healed.
Marianne WilliamsonThink of one person who you are tempted for any reason to withhold love from, and pray for their happiness. In that moment your pain will stop.
Marianne WilliamsonThe self-organizing and self-correcting imprint is on all aspects of reality. So not only was your body formed by this invisible hand, not only does your body continue to work by this invisible hand, but every aspect of your life - emotionally, physiologically, and spiritually - is also programmed to thrive, is also programmed for self-organization and self-correction.
Marianne WilliamsonA change of heart leads to change in behavior, and a change in behavior leads to changing the world.
Marianne WilliamsonThe power to be at peace - not because of anything your physical senses perceive, and sometimes in spite of what your physical senses perceive - is the power to help heal this world miraculously.
Marianne WilliamsonWe may have bad weather in Ireland, but the sun shines in the hearts of the people and that keeps us all warm.
Marianne WilliamsonIf you are not grieving, you are not conscious. But if you are not rejoicing in the possibilities of how this could all change, then you are not looking through the filter of the greatest spiritual perspicacity.
Marianne WilliamsonGo forth in confidence and go forth in peace. For there are angels to your left and angels to your right; angels in front of you and angels behind you; angels above you and angels below. You are loved, and you are not alone.
Marianne WilliamsonPeople who are meditating every day and involved in a serious spiritual practice don't usually wake up in the morning and want to rush out to eat a bunch of junk food.
Marianne WilliamsonSo it is that a new politics centers around the arousal of that power, using prayer and meditation to create a force field of transformation.
Marianne WilliamsonIt's difficult to be alive in America today and truly be in denial anymore. It's not hip to be unconscious or uninvolved. One of our great strengths is that we're an optimistic people, but that doesn't mean we don't have sad days.
Marianne WilliamsonAs you get older, you have more and more layers of experience to forgive, more layers of heartbreak, more layers of what you might think of as failure.
Marianne Williamson