Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotes

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

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 know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

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.

All gods are one god.

Love is the only prayer I know.

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

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself

... all the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world ...

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

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

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

And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference...

And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea.

Never name the well from which you will not drink.

What wise God would consign a man to Hell for ignorance, instead of teaching him better in the afterlife?

Of all things we mortals are called upon to do, the most difficult is forgiveness; in order to truly do it, you will probably have to behave as if you already have forgiven for quite a while before you have actually done so.

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!

My love for you is a prayer, she thought. Love is the only prayer I know.

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,

No man or woman can live another's fate

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.

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.

If you own a machine, you are in turn owned by it, and spend your time serving it...

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

But this is my truth; I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

The Goddess has a fourth face. It is secret, and you should prey, as I do, as I do Igraine, that Morgause will never wear that face.

Arthur, their young king, like a hero out of legend.

And as men believe, so their world goes." - Merlin

I should know, for I am Morgaine le Fay, priestess of the Isle of Avalon, where the ancient religion of the Mother Goddess is born.

Morgaine laughed and mocked, but when it was a real trouble, no one could be kinder.

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.

Lancelot: Morgaine, Morgaine - kinswoman, I have never seen you weep. Morgaine: Are you like so many men, afraid of a woman's tears? (...) Lancelot: No (...) it makes them seem so much more real, so much more vulnerable - women who never weep frighten me, because I know they are stronger than I, and I am always a little afraid of what they will do.

Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready." - Kevin

They have not forgotten the Mysteries,' she said, ‘they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.' Lancelot smiled bitterly. ‘Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work though lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God's justice but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.' Morgaine knew that he spoke truth, and bowed her head in anguish. ‘And since their view of a God is what shapes their reality, so it shall be–the Goddess was real while mankind still paid homage to her, and created her form for themselves. Now they will make for themselves the kind of God they think they want–the kind of God they deserve, perhaps.' Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.

But even the longest day wears to sunset.

For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

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 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.

I have neither talent or taste for kingship, cousin. I am a warrior, and to dwell always in one place and live at court would weary me to death!

I came to see that my quarrel was never with the Christ, but with his foolish and narrow priests who mistook their own narrowness for his.

Knowledge was like a mouthful of dust.

Sometimes the will must be abandoned. The secret lies in knowing when to exercise control, and when to let go.

If you seek to avoid your fate or to delay suffering, it only condemns you to suffer it redoubled in another life.

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 priestess of Avalon does not lie. But I am cast out of Avalon, and for this, and unless it is all to be for nothing, I must lie, and lie well and quickly

Men destroy only what they fear.

God is one and there is but one God — all else is but the way the ignorant seek to put Gods into a form they can understand...

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom,” Viviane said. “Then, when you begin to learn, you will not have to forget all the things you think you know.

A life path may have strange twists and turnings, and we do not always end up where we intend to go....

And the truth is only that we grow and die and wither even as this grass here.

I suppose all societies adapt their morals to their needs.

Pride, she thought drearily, was a cold bedfellow.

Customs have no reason; they simply are.

Return again, return, life itself is calling you with all its pleasure and pain ...

For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth; that there is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you, and whether, at the end, you arrive at the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and hell and damnation...but perhaps I am unjust even to them. Even the Lady of the Lake, who hated a priest's robe as she would have hated a poisonous viper, and with good cause too, chid me once for speaking evil of the God. 'For all the Gods are one god,' she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, 'and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and their is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.' And so, perhaps, the truth winds somewhere between the road to Glastonbury, Isle of the Priests, and the road to Avalon, lost forever in the mists of the Summer Sea. But this is my truth, I who am Morgaine tell you these things, Morgaine who was in later days called Morgan le Fay.

If you can read, there is no worldly wisdom that cannot be gathered from the pages of a book.

He was guarded behind a hundred fences of reserve and anger.

But I am Niniane of Avalon, and I account to no man on this earth for what I do with what is mine -- yes, mine and not yours. I am not Roman, to let some man tell me what I may do with what the Goddess gave me

For ever the world of Fairy drifts further from the world in which the Christ holds sway. I have no quarrel with the Christ, only with his priests, who call the Great Goddess a demon and deny that she ever held power in this world.

... and it seemed to her that time stopped, that her body melted into his as if she were without nerve or bone or will, and his kiss was like fire and ice on her lips.

… but I believe the divine ones will send other great masters to preach the truth to mankind, and that mankind will always receive them with the cross and the fire and the stones

Men are by nature wanderers...Every people has moved from somewhere, and had to learn the ways of the land from the people who were there before.

Remain yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always find one friend who doesn't lie.

Will you walk the road to your destiny, or must the Gods drag you to it unwilling?

Rome was mud and smoky skies; the rank smell of the Tiber and the exotically spiced cooking fires of a hundred different nationalities. Rome was white marble and gilding and heady perfumes; the blare of trumpets and the shrieking of market-women and the eternal, sub-aural hum of more people, speaking more languages than Gaius had ever imagined existed, crammed together on seven hills whose contours had long ago disappeared beneath this encrustation if humanity. Rome was the pulsing heart of the world.

If you truly believe that, my lady and queen, then for you it is truth: all the Gods are One God and all the Goddesses one Goddess. But would you presume to declare one truth for all of mankind throughout the world?

He leaned his head in his hands, as if the burden he bore were too great for endurance. ‘You are wise’, he said, then raised his head and stared at her with unflinching hatred. ‘I wish you were a foolish woman I could despise, damn you!

She cried aloud, with a great mourning cry for all that she had never known in this life, and the agony of a bereavement unguessed till this moment.

The symbol of the dragon should be always before them, that mankind seek to accomplish, not to think of sin and do penance!

You are sensitive - but make that your servant, not your master.

And if the earth Gods wreak vengeance on the sinless and the sinful alike, then this further destruction cannot be punishment for sins, but is in the way of all nature.

and suddenly she tired of behaving as she ought.

it is the belief of mankind which shapes the world, and all of reality.

Desidererò sempre una felicità fuori della mia portata? si chiese d'un tratto. Oppure imparerò con il tempo a vivere appagata all'interno delle nebbie che ci circondano?

And then a memory from Avalon surfaced in her mind, something she had not thought of for a decade; one of the Druids, giving instruction in the secret wisdom to the young priestesses, had said, If you would have the message of the Gods to direct your life, look for that which repeats, again and again; for this is the message given you by the Gods, the karmic lesson you must learn for this incarnation. It comes again and again until you have made it part of your soul and your enduring spirit.

For all the Gods are one God,” she said to me then, as she had said many times before, and as I have said to my own novices many times, and as every priestess who comes after me will say again, “and all the Goddesses are one Goddess, and there is only one Initiator. And to every man his own truth, and the God within.

But if men do not believe in more than one life,” Igraine protested, shaken, “how will they avoid despair? What just God would create some men wretched, and others happy and prosperous, if one life were all that they could have?

humans—far from being a dominant species, were regarded as one of the most unstable and untrustworthy, being at the mercy of what most of the Unity's people regarded as a dangerously prevalent sex drive.

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!

You speak of being afraid. Yet fear is something you generate in yourself, from your mind's lack of control; and you will learn to look at it and discover for yourself when you choose to be afraid. The first thing you must do is acknowledge that the fear is yours, and you can bid it come and go at will. Begin with this; whenever you feel fear that prevents choice say to yourself: 'What has made me feel fear? Why have I chosen to feel this fear preventing my choice, instead of feeling the freedom to choose?' Fear is a way of not allowing yourself to choose freely what you will do next; a way of letting your body's reflexes, not the needs of your mind, choose for you. ...[Y]ou have chosen to do nothing, so that none of the things you fear will come upon you; so your choices are not made by you but by your fear. ... I cannot promise to free you of your fear, only that a time will come when you are the master, and fear will not paralyze you.

For this is the great secret, which was known to all educated men in our day: that by what men think, we create the world around us, daily new. And

If I, who am rhu'ad, do not break the laws," she said, "then no one will ever dare to break them, and our planet will stagnate in dead traditions.

Sin is in the wish to do no harm.

Perché lei riusciva a capire quel che non capivano i suoi genitori? Non avrebbero dovuto essere più saggi di lei? Era spaventoso che non lo fossero.

Or is it only that there are so few of us, now, who were young together?

If he knew, if he was told in so many words, he would have to do the conventional thing, he would have to express the conventional shock and horror. But knowing without analyzing, knowing in a place that went deeper than words, he could see it, know it, accept it.

I could write pages and pages about the delights of being a full-time housewife and mother and trying to write and support a family with two babies—but I don’t use that kind of language in public.

Los dos se llamaban Rafael y ambos habían hecho un juramento, lucharon juntos, murieron y fueron enterrados en la misma tumba..." Como no sabía muy bien lo que hacía, extendió la mano hacia Regis y tomó la de él en la suya. Dijo, "Me gustaría morir así. ¿A ti no?

The Christians seek to blot out all wisdom save their own; and in that strife they are banishing from this world all forms of mystery save that which will fit into their religious faith. They have pronounced it a heresy that men live more than one life - which every peasant knows to be true.

But I mind," Bart said savagely. "I'd like to see a world where I could have my picture taken, say, with Tommy on my lap if I want to. For every woman who got upset because I wasn't, shall we say, available for her romantic daydreams, there's be some young kid reading the papers and going to movies, and he'd be able to stop hating himself and say, 'Okay Bart Reeder is queer, and he's happy and successful, and he's getting along okay, so maybe I don't have to go out and hang myself after all.' And the suicide rate would go down, and everybody would be happy

By and large, the kind of science fiction which makes tomorrow's headlines as near as this morning's coffee has enlarged popular awareness of the modern, miraculous world of science we live in. It has helped generations of young people feel at age with a changing world. But fashions change, old loves return, and now that Sputniks clutter up the sky with new and unfamiliar moons, the readers of science fiction are willing to wait to read tomorrow's headlines. Once again, I think, there is a place, a wish, a need for the wonder and color of the world way out. The world beyond the stars. The world we won't live to see. That is why I wrote The Door Through Space.

He said, and his voice was strained as if he had had a mortal wound, 'Gwenhwyfar-' He so seldom spoke her formal name, it was always my lady or my queen, or when he spoke to her in play it was always Gwen. When he spoke it now, it seemed to her she had never heard a sweeter sound. 'Gwenhwyfar. Why do you weep?' Now she must lie, and lie well, because, she could not in honor tell him the truth. She said, 'Because-' and stopped, and then, in a choking voice, she said, 'because I do not know how I shall live if you go away.

It had to do with the knowledge that the world was as it was because of what men believed it was... year by year, these past three or four generations, the minds of men had been hardened to believing that there was one God, one world, one way of describing reality, and that all things which intruded on the realm of that great one-ness must be evil and of the fiends, and that the sound of the bells and the shadow of their holy places would keep the evil afar. And as more and more people believed this, it was so, and Avalon no more than a dream adrift in an almost inaccessible other world

For this is the thing the priests do not know, with their One God and One Truth: that 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, and whether, at the end, you arrive in the Holy Isle of Eternity or among the priests with their bells and their death and their Satan and Hell and damnation

All events are but the consummation of preceding causes, clearly seen but not distinctly apprehended. When the strain is sounded, the most untutored listener can tell that it must end with the keynote, although he cannot see why each successive bar must lead at last to the concluding chord. The law of Karma is the force which leads all chords to the keynote, which spreads the ripples from the tiny stone dropped into a pool, until the tidal waves drown a continent, long after the stone has sunk from sight and been forgotten.

but the older priestesses had explained to her, as they gathered in the courtyard, that the Moon God was effacing the brightness of the Goddess, and she ran out with them joyously to join in the shrieks of the women to frighten him away. Later it had been explained to her how the sun and moon moved, and why, now and again, one of them crossed the face of the other; that it was in the way of nature, and the common people’s beliefs about the face of the Gods were symbols which these people, at the current state of their evolution, needed to visualize the great truths. Some day all men and women would know the inner truths, but now they needed them not.

They have not forgotten the Mysteries,” she said, “they have found them too difficult. They want a God who will care for them, who will not demand that they struggle for enlightenment, but who will accept them just as they are, with all their sins, and take away their sins with repentance. It is not so, it will never be so, but perhaps it is the only way the unenlightened can bear to think of their Gods.” Lancelet smiled bitterly. “Perhaps a religion which demands that every man must work through lifetime after lifetime for his own salvation is too much for mankind. They want not to wait for God’s justice, but to see it now. And that is the lure which this new breed of priests has promised them.

What sorrow is like to the sorrow of one who is alone? Once I dwelt in the company of the king I loved well, And my arm was heavy with the weight of the rings he gave, And my heart weighed down with the gold of his love. The face the king is like the sun to those who surrounded,. But now my heart is empty And I wander along throughout the world. The groves take on their blossoms, The trees and meadows grow fair But the cuckoo, saddest of singers, Cries forth the only sorrow of the exile, And now my heart hoes wandering, In search of what I shall never see more; All faces are alike to me if I cannot see the face of my king, And all countries are alike to me When I cannot see the fair fields and meadows of my home. So I shall arise and follow my heart in its wandering For what is the fair meadow of home to me When I cannot see the face of my king And the weight on my arm is but a band of gold When the heart is empty of the weight of love. And so I shall go roaming Over the fishers' road And the road of the great whale And beyond the country of the wave With none to bear me company But the memory of those I loved And the songs I sang out of a full heart, And the cuckoo's cry in memory.