By making a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, we are declaring an end to our spiritual rebellion. We give up all resistance and cease all hostilities. We stop fighting God and make peace with him. We accept his terms, which are not unreasonable: we start to rest in him, to trust him and to look to him for our peace and our security, confident that we are loved and will be cared for, whatever the circumstances. We admit that he’s God and we are not. We surrender our will to his and accept his guidance and direction for our lives.
"If I feel that my pain has in part been occasioned by others, I try to repeat, ‘God grant me the serenity to love their best, and never fear their worst.’ This healing process has seldom failed to restore me to at least a workable emotional balance and perspective." – Bill W., As Bill Sees It
"In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision, we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done." – 12&12, Step 3, pp. 40–41 
"When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation—some fact of my life—unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment." – Dr. Paul O. ("Acceptance Was the Answer," Big Book, p. 417) 
"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace—that where there is hatred, I may bring love . . . where wrong, forgiveness . . . where discord, harmony . . . where error, truth . . . where doubt faith . . . where despair, hope . . . where shadows, light . . . where sadness, joy." – St. Francis Prayer, 12&12, Step 11 
"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." – John 14:27 
"Cultivate peace first in the garden of your heart by removing the weeds of selfishness and jealousy, greed and anger, pride and ego. Then all will benefit from your peace and harmony." – Buddha 
"Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace." – Petrarch 
"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you." – Nathaniel Hawthorne 
"A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us." – Joseph Addison 
"Whenever conscience speaks with a divided, uncertain, and disputed voice, it is not the voice of God. Descend still deeper into yourself, until you hear nothing but a clear, undivided voice, a voice which does away with doubt and brings with it persuasion, light, and serenity." – Henri Frederic Amiel 
"If I have been of service; if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good; if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action; if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day." – Alex Noble 
"The first step to becoming a more peaceful person is to have the humility to admit that, in most cases, you're creating your own emergencies. Life will usually go on if things don't go according to plan. It's helpful to keep reminding yourself and repeating the sentence, ‘Life isn't an emergency’." – Richard Carlson 
"The simplification of life is one of the steps to inner peace. A persistent simplification will create an inner and outer well-being that places harmony in one's life.” – Peace Pilgrim 
"Inner peace can be reached only when we practice forgiveness. Forgiveness is letting go of the past, and is therefore the means for correcting our misperceptions." – Gerald G. Jampolsky 
"I had found a kind of serenity, a new maturity . . . I didn't feel better or stronger than anyone else but it seemed no longer important whether everyone loved me or not—more important now was for me to love them. Feeling that way turns your whole life around; living becomes the act of giving.” – Beverly Sills
"Today this faith in a Higher Power, plus the honesty, open-mindedness and willingness to work the Steps of the program, gives me the serenity that I seek.” – A.A.’s Daily Reflections 
"When you have confidence in God’s grace, you can face whatever comes. When you have confidence in God’s love, you can be serene and at peace. You can rest in the faith that God will take care of you. – Twenty-Four Hours a Day
"When I react, I put the control of my peace of mind in the hands of others. My serenity is under my control, and I will not relinquish it for trivial occurrences." – One Day at a Time in Al-Anon
"When I gather flowers, or marvel at nature’s wonders, I do not lose face when I concede that I’m not in control. So it is with everything in my life. The best way I’ve found to invite serenity is to recognize that the world is in good hands." – Al-Anon’s Courage to Change 
"I will surrender and let a Higher Power's will happen in my life. I will accept the gift of serenity this surrender brings." – Just For Today: Daily Meditations for Recovering Addicts 
"Having interiorized and become wholly disposed to peace, we can then become peacemakers. Our internal strife gone, we are able to impart to others the peace that we now have in us." – PTP123 
"As a virtue, serenity is a mean (in Aristotelian terms) with regard to the inevitable vicissitudes of life, which quite naturally tend to arouse negative emotions. It enables us to feel them in just proportion, neither too much so that we overreact and make matters worse, nor too little so that we underreact and can’t do justice to a situation." – PTP4 
For more P TP123 passages on serenity and peace, see “The Serenity Prayer,” pp. 192–202, and “Serenity and Peace,” pp. 214–215. For more PTP4, see for serenity pp. 171, 264, 298, 316; and Stoicism, 285; and prayer, 247, 248, 379; for peace pp. 287, 331, 381, 437; of mind, 169, 248; maker, 316; restore, 326. For more Big Book and 12&12 passages, click on 164andmore.com and search under serenity and peace and their cognates. On this site, see The Virtue of Acceptance, in Practice These, and The Slogans of Step 3, in Reflections.
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