Marion Zimmer Bradley famous quotes

To know you are ignorant is the beginning of wisdom.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Wisdom #Understanding #Ignorant

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Doe #Goddess #Showers

Some knowledge and some song and some beauty must be kept for those days before the world again plunges into darkness.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Song #Knowledge #Darkness

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

#Kings #Shadow #Speak

Love is the only prayer I know.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Prayer #Love Is

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

#Letting Go #Lying #Exercise

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

#Hope #Despair #Destination

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!
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#People #Ignorant #Littles

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Thinking #Men #World

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

#Lasts

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Faces #Avalon #Truth Is

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Inspiration #Tired #Mean

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Brother #Fall #Men

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

#Children #Lying #Heart

... 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

#Believe #Fire #Stones

The truth is not so good a story.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Stories #Truth Is

[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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Girl #Broken #House

Light flared through every limb, a force far too great to be contained in any human frame; but for that moment she was the Great Mother, giving birth to the world.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Mother #Light #Giving

All gods are one god.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

There is no sorrow like the memory of love and the knowledge that it is gone forever
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Memories #Forever #Sorrow

I have called on the Goddess and found her within myself
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Goddess #Found

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

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Memories #Power #Voice

A friend of ours has a hobby doing genealogy, and we found out that we were cousins in the ninth degree, that we had a common ancestor on the Mayflower.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Cousin #Hobbies #Degrees

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

#Wise #Teaching #Ignorance

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Children

On one occasion I shared a bed with about seven other people, but we were all having a party overnight
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Party #People #Bed

I never thought that I was very intelligent
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Intelligent

I've been a schoolteacher. I always try to get the kids to finish talking before the next one starts
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Kids #Talking #Trying

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Summer #Wind #Sea

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

#Differences #Use #Certain

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

#Machines #Turns

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Elude

Never name the well from which you will not drink.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Names #Drink #Wells

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

#Heart #Rome #Sky

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
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Lying #Doe #Avalon

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!
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Cousin #Warrior #Taste

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

#Real #Trouble

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Mother #Avalon #Ancient

No man or woman can live another's fate
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Fate #Men

Arthur, their young king, like a hero out of legend.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Kings #Hero #Legends

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

#Writing #Mind #Fiction

All the tears women shed, they leave no mark on the world...
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Tears #World #Mark

Knowledge was like a mouthful of dust.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Dust

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Men #Nurse #Looks

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

#Order #Done #Difficult

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Real #Men #Tears

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

#Believe #Men #Differences

One of the earliest lessons I learned was not to read my reviews. Weigh them.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Lessons #Reviews

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Soul #Looks #Messages

Well, so it must be, for as man saw reality, so it became.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Men #Reality #Saws

A babe at the breast is as much pleasure as the bearing is pain.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Pain #Pleasure #Babe

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!
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Love #Regret #Long

Without a dream to light your way, the word is a very dark place.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Dream #Dark #Light

Speak not against anyone whose burden you have not weighed yourself.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Speak #Burden

For there is no higher religion than the Truth.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Wisdom #Higher

Flowers and fruit are only the beginning. In the seed lies the life and the future.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Life #Lying #Flower

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

#Pain #Opposites #Wish

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Sex #Men #Emotional

If you listen to dogs barking you will go deaf without learning anything.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Dog #Deaf

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Inspirational #Life #Secret

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.
-- Marion Zimmer Bradley

#Fear #Mind #Body