Quotes Addressing Slips and Setbacks

(Writer’s note: We’ve just had a slip or a setback. Our first reaction is to give into the compulsions(s) until it feels right in order to bring peace of mind….WRONG!!!!

Slips and setbacks are part of the recovery process. It’s what we do AFTER the setback that matters.

Here are some quotes that have helped me when I have had a slip. There are two parts to it: “TO ERR IS HUMAN” and “TO FORGIVE (ONESELF) IS DIVINE.” – Ken Munro)

 

 

                                                          TO ERR IS HUMAN                                                                                 

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. 

– Oscar Wilde

 

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.

– James Joyce

 

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually fear you will make one.

                                                                                                           – Elbert Hubbard

 

Some of the best lessons we ever learn, we learn from our mistakes and failures…. The error of the past is the wisdom and success of the future.

– Tryon Edwards

 

What we do AFTER we make a mistake is more important than the original error.

– from the book, “A New Day”

 

He who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

– Samuel Smiles

 

One must be a god to be able to tell success from failures without making a mistake.

– Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

 

Wisdom is learned from failures much more than from success.

– Author unknown

                                              

If we were brought to trial for the crimes we had committed against ourselves, few would escape the gallows.

– Paul Eldridge

 

 

 TO FORGIVE (ONESELF) IS DIVINE

All the things you think you should have done that you didn’t do and all things you did that you think you shouldn’t have done, accept them. You did (or didn’t) do them. That’s reality. That’s what happened. No changing the past. You can struggle with the past or pretend it didn’t happen or you can accept it. We suggest the latter. A life of guilt, fear and unconsciousness is, to say the least, not much fun.

-from the book “Life 101”

 

There is no witness so terrible – no accuser so powerful – as conscience which dwells within us. – Sphocles

 

He forgives all my sins. He heals me.

– Psalm 103:3

 

Perfectionism does not exist; to understand it is the triumph of human intelligence; to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.

– Alfred de Musset

 

The desire of perfection is the worst disease that ever afflicted the human mind. 

– Louis de Fontanes

 

Reforms always come from below. No man with four aces asks for a new deal.

– The Irish Digest

                 

Why art thou troubled because things do not succeed with thee according to thy desire? Who is there who hath all things according to his will? Neither I, nor thou, nor any man upon earth.

 – Thomas A’ Kempis

 

How unhappy is he who can not forgive himself.                                     – Publilius Sy