Marion Zimmer Bradley Quotes

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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...

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

Love is the only prayer I know.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

...perhaps mankind must have a time of darkness so that we will one day again know what a blessing is the light.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

They set down all their knowledge on bits of leather or waxed wood or tablets of stone and think that is wisdom. What good does it do a piece of stone to have knowledge?...know it is the understanding graven in the heart that makes men wise.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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...

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

… 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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

And indeed there is little opportunity for the old and poor to sin, except to doubt God’s goodness, and if God cannot understand why we doubt that, then he is not as wise as his priests think, heh heh heh . . .

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

But even the longest day wears to sunset.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

It has never been, and never will be easy work! But 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.

~ Marion Zimmer Bradley