Recovery Quotes

Recovery quotes can make going through a challenging time just a little easier. And, even though these thoughts and insights can’t do everything, we hope they make the process less difficult for those in their time of need.

To be “in recovery” means that a person is making progress towards a goal. It doesn’t mean the person is cured, although it can mean being on the path to a definitive cure. Sometimes “in recovery” means being in remission, which suggests that relapse is a distinct possibility.

There are many components to recovery, including personal responsibility and hope. Individuals must take the lead on their own self-care. Hope provides inspiration and motivation for a positive recovery.

Good recovery quotes.

Best Recovery Quotes

Empowerment is another key aspect of recovery. People have the independence and control to participate in all decisions related to their recovery.

Hemingway recovery quote.

1.) The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.
Ernest Hemingway

Sharon Salzberg quotation on recovery.

2.) Even in the midst of devastation, something within us always points the way to freedom.
Sharon Salzberg

Zen proverb on healing.

3.) If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking.
Zen Proverb

Drew Barrymore on pains becoming strengths.

4.) In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.
Drew Barrymore

See Good Self-Care Quotes.

Understanding myself healing quote.

5.) I understood myself only after I destroyed myself. And only in the process of fixing myself did I know who I really was.
Unknown

Healing saying.

6.) Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.
Unknown

Carl Bard quote on a brand new start.

7.) Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
Carl Bard

See Great American Smokeout – November 18.

Good Recovery Quotes

Recovery addresses all components of a person’s life: physical, mental, and spiritual. As you review these sayings, note their holistic nature.

Nobody stays recovered unless the life they have created is more rewarding and satisfying than the one they left behind.
Anne Fletcher

Anyone can give up; it is the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would expect you to fall apart, now that is true strength.
Chris Bradford

Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it but also the father who wipes away the tears.
Criss Jami

The character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
Helen Keller

If you accept the expectations of others, especially negative ones, then you never will change the outcome.
Michael Jordan

Do not mock pain that you have not endured.
Unknown

If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

I think that power is the principle. The principle of moving forward, as though you have the confidence to move forward, eventually gives you confidence when you look back and see what you’ve done.
Robert Downey Jr.

Healing Sayings

Most recoveries are not perfectly linear. As with all of life, there are usually ups and downs. Don’t be discouraged by temporary setbacks.

Courage isn’t having the strength to go on – it is going on when you don’t have strength.
Napoléon Bonaparte

An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate.
Criss Jami

Recovery is an acceptance that your life is in shambles and you have to change.
Jamie Lee Curtis

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.
Robert J. Sawyer

Relapses don’t erase progress. Progress is not linear.
Unknown

Mental illness is not a choice, but recovery is.
Unknown

Sometimes in order to change we need to be sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Unknown

Short Recovery Quotes

Having the support of a loved one as you go through recovery makes things so much easier. We all need someone to lean on occasionally.

One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.
Demi Lovato

Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from hell.
Carrie Fisher

You must do the things you think you cannot do.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
Japanese Proverb

Recovery is hard. Regret is harder.
Brittany Burgunder

Where there is life, there is hope.
Ron Grover

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
Theodore Roosevelt

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.
Mark Twain

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.
Jim Rohn

If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.
Babe Ruth

Short Recovery Quotes for Women

Eliminating discrimination and fostering self-respect are critical in the healing process.

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford

You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside of you.
Seth Adam Smith

If things go wrong, don’t go with them.
Roger Babson

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

No matter how dark the night may get, your light will never burn out.
Jeanette LeBlanc

If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising up every time we fail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Recovery Is About Progression Not Perfection.
Unknown

It always seems impossible until it’s done.
Nelson Mandela

You feel your strength in the experience of pain.
Jim Morrison

Be stronger than your strongest excuse.
Unknown

Motivational Recovery Quotes

The concept of recovery was probably most associated with the 12-step process to recover from depending on alcohol. But, the idea has expanded to many other areas of need.

The goal isn’t to be sober. The goal is to love yourself so much that you don’t need to drink.
Unknown

We’re either working on recovery or working on a relapse.
Unknown

Rising from the ashes, I am born again, powerful, exultant, majestic through all the pain.
Shannon Perry

Sometimes you’ve just got to give yourself what you wish someone else would give you.
Dr. Phil

Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path.
Unknown

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein

Recuperation and Improvement

One of the main reasons people are motivated to recover is to recapture their health and well-being while striving to reach their full potential.

Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking of what we want to become. Sometimes we motivate ourselves by thinking about who we don’t ever want to be again.
Shane Niemeyer

Your best days are ahead of you. The movie starts when the guy gets sober and puts his life back together; it doesn’t end there.
Bucky Sinister

I am not defined by my relapses, but by my decision to remain in recovery despite them.
Unknown

When everything seems like an uphill struggle, just think of the view from the top.
Unknown

Experience is not what happens to you, it is what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley

I understood, through rehab, things about creating characters. I understood that creating whole people means knowing where we come from, how we can make a mistake, and how we overcome things to make ourselves stronger.
Samuel L. Jackson

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma Gandhi

Recovery Sayings

Many times, recovery involves the individual, family, friends, and the community.

Many people say that recovery from an aneurysm is like having a layer of skin ripped off – your experience of life is more intense.
Maryam D’Abo

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier

My identity shifted when I got into recovery. That’s who I am now, and it actually gives me greater pleasure to have that identity than to be a musician or anything else, because it keeps me in a manageable size. When I’m down on the ground with my disease-which, ‘I’m happy to have-it’ gets me in tune. It gives me a spiritual anchor.
Eric Clapton

Recovery is all about using our power to change our beliefs that are based on faulty data.
Kevin McCormick

It’s going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
Joseph Campbell

Inspirational Recovery Quotes

Recovery offers the prospect of hope to individuals. Without hope, life can be a grim experience at certain times for some individuals.

Focus on problems and you’ll have more problems. Focus on possibilities and you’ll have more possibilities.
Unknown

Heal the heart, don’t hide the pain.
Melanie Koulouris

Live less out of habit and more out of intent.
Unknown

How To Use These Recovery Quotes?

The road to recovery is full of challenges that include relapses. For these, times these quotes will inspire you to keep moving forward and see how these relapses have only helped you strengthen up and learn from another bad experience.

You may use these recovery quotes if you yourself are going through recovery, or you can read them to your loved ones faced with the same challenge. Other opportunities for using these thoughts include texting favorites to a friend, including them in emails or letters, or making one or several the focus of a conversation.

If you’re on a journey to recovery or know a friend on that path, we wish you all the best.

By Sarah Martin

Sarah is a writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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