Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotes

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

Without a dream to light your way, the world is a very dark place.

There are ignorant priests and ignorant people, who are all too ready to cry sorcery if a woman is only a little wiser than they are!

Beware what you speak,' said the Merlin very softly, 'for indeed the words we speak make shadows of what is to come, and by speaking them we bring them to pass, my king.

Magic is a matter of focusing the disciplined will. But sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

Love is the only prayer I know.

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here.

The older I grow the more I become certain that it makes no difference what words we use to tell the same truths.

Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.

Speak not against anyone whose burden you have not weighed yourself.

Flowers and fruit are only the beginning. In the seed lies the life and the future.

Darling, I wish I could help you. Try to remember this: to live, you need every experience. Some will come in glory and in beauty, and some in pain and what seems like ugliness. But - they are. Life consists of opposites in balance.

I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.' The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

If you would have the message of the gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats ... It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever.

What you see is from outside yourself, and may come, or not, but is beyond your control. But your fear is yours, and yours alone, like your voice, or your fingers, or your memory, and therefore yours to control. If you feel powerless over your fear, you have not yet admitted that it is yours, to do with as you will.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

There's no "magic secret"; writing is like everything else; ten percent inspiration or talent, and ninety percent hard work. Persistence; keeping at it till you get there. As Agnes de Mille said, it means working every day—bored, tired, weary, or with a fever of a hundred and two.

A woman is never free to bear a child unless she is also free to abort it.

Science fiction encourages us to explore... all the futures, good and bad, that the human mind can envision.

I cannot regret it. They tell us in the temple that true joy is found only in freedom from the Wheel that is death and rebirth, that we must come to despise earthly joy and suffering, and long only for the peace of the presence of the eternal. Yet I love this life on Earth, Morgan, and I love you with a love that is stronger than death, and if sin is the price of binding us together, life after life across the ages, then I will sin joyfully and without regret, so that it brings me back to you, my beloved!

[T]he House of Maidens was for little girls whose whole duty in life was to spill things, break things, and forget things . . . until they had spilled, broken, and forgotten everything they could, and thus made room in their lives for a little wisdom.