200+ Quotes & Sayings By Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the best-selling novel The Signature of All Things, which was named one of Oprah's Favorite Books of 2005. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

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People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.. . Elizabeth Gilbert
This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It...
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This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism. Elizabeth Gilbert
To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved...
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To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous. Elizabeth Gilbert
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living...
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To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balancedlife. Elizabeth Gilbert
Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your...
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Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing... Elizabeth Gilbert
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In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. Elizabeth Gilbert
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People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestly and say, ‘I can work around that. I can make something out of it.’? Because the good stuff is always going to be there, and it’s always going to pretty and sparkly, but the crap underneath can ruin you. Elizabeth Gilbert
The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying the...
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The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying the only thing more impossible than stayin the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.g was leaving. Elizabeth Gilbert
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One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not? . Elizabeth Gilbert
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I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Elizabeth Gilbert
The love that moves the sun and the other stars.
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The love that moves the sun and the other stars. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody–really want him–it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury. Elizabeth Gilbert
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If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I will protect upon you all sorts of good qualities that you have never actually cultivated in yourself and I will buy Christmas presents for your entire family. I will give you the sun and the rain, and if they are not available, I will give you a sun check and a rain check. I will give you all this and more, until I get so exhausted and depleted that the only way I can recover my energy is by becoming infatuated with someone else. Elizabeth Gilbert
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But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day? . Elizabeth Gilbert
Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running...
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Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Your problem is you don't understand what that word means. People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. . Elizabeth Gilbert
Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love it's...
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Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job. Elizabeth Gilbert
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My love affair with (him) had a wonderful element of romance to it, which I will always cherish. But it was not an infatuation, and here’s how I can tell: because I did not demand that he become my Great Emancipator or my Source of All Life, nor did I immediately vanish into that man’s chest cavity like a twisted, unrecognizable, parasitical homonculus. During our long period of courtship, I remained intact within my own personality, and I allowed myself to meet (him) for who he was. Elizabeth Gilbert
Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you...
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Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. Elizabeth Gilbert
The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is...
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The Bhagavad Gita--that ancient Indian Yogic text--says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection. Elizabeth Gilbert
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When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you've just wandered off the path, that you'll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it's time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don't even know from which direction the sun rises anymore. Elizabeth Gilbert
It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.
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It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away. Elizabeth Gilbert
You were given life; it is your duty (and also...
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You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. Elizabeth Gilbert
Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes...
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Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Instructions for freedom":1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go. 6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.10. When the past has past from you at last, let go. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. . Elizabeth Gilbert
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Parla come magni, ' It means, 'Speak the way you eat, ' or in my personal translation: 'Say it like you eat it.' It's a reminder - when you're making a big deal out of explaining something, when you're searching for the right words - to keep your language as simple and direct as Roman rood. Don't make a big production out of it. Just lay it on the table. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like a bandit - will behave like one, always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won't. You have to admit that you can't catch it. That you're not supposed to catch it. At some point, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you. Elizabeth Gilbert
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The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I look at the Augusteum, and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all. It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated. The Augusteum warns me to not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve. Yesterday I might have been a glorious monument to somebody, true enough--but tomorrow I could be a fireworks depository. Even in the Eternal City, says the silent Augusteum, one must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never dared to admit you wanted-an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with a hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is witheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy, and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore-- despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have 'that thing' even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's final destination-- the complete and merciless devaluation of self." - pg 20-21. Elizabeth Gilbert
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You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions. Elizabeth Gilbert
Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.
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Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation. Elizabeth Gilbert
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So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page: I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it– I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship–the lending of a hand fromme to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace–reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing–it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours! ” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND… I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too. Elizabeth Gilbert
One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves...
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One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation. Elizabeth Gilbert
If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then...
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If I am truly to become an autonomous woman, then I must take over that role of being my own guardian... I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too. Elizabeth Gilbert
We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals,...
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We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality. Elizabeth Gilbert
The day is ending. It's time for something that was...
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The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go. Elizabeth Gilbert
There's no trouble in this world so serious that it...
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There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer. Elizabeth Gilbert
The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the...
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The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident. Elizabeth Gilbert
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All I could say was, "I don't know what to do." I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, "Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth. Elizabeth Gilbert
Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.
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Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true. Elizabeth Gilbert
I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and...
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I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit. Elizabeth Gilbert
Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all,...
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Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all. Elizabeth Gilbert
Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like...
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Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion. Elizabeth Gilbert
God dwells within you, as you.
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God dwells within you, as you. Elizabeth Gilbert
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it...
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I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker, " he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything. . Elizabeth Gilbert
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I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what i want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God. Elizabeth Gilbert
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But I was always coming here. I though about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen. Elizabeth Gilbert
I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances....
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I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water. Elizabeth Gilbert
In fact, it was all I could do to stop...
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In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work … Elizabeth Gilbert
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I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing in this universe as hell, except maybe in our own terrified minds. Because if even one broken and limited human being could experience even one such episode of absolute forgiveness and acceptance of her own self, then imagine–just imagine! –what God, in all His eternal compassion, can forgive and accept. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Culturally, though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know don’t speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business.“ Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed–much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them.“ In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this– I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God . Elizabeth Gilbert
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Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years-- I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue. Elizabeth Gilbert
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This is what we are like. Collectively as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old lady once, almost 100 years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge? Everything else is somehow manageable. But these two questions of love and control undo us all, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering. Elizabeth Gilbert
True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given...
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True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" – a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: "If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared — most of all — to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself.. then truth will not be withheld from you." Or so I've come to believe. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. Elizabeth Gilbert
I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm...
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I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises. Elizabeth Gilbert
You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your...
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You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings. Elizabeth Gilbert
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People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't you will eat away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. Elizabeth Gilbert
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As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. . Elizabeth Gilbert
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Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment. It’s easy enough to pray when you’re in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments. Elizabeth Gilbert
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The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people. Elizabeth Gilbert
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There’s a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, "Let me take care of you forever, " and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I’d given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear. But to hear it from someone else now, from someone who is speaking sincerely... Elizabeth Gilbert
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Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope Elizabeth Gilbert
Your tears are my prayers.
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Your tears are my prayers. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy. Elizabeth Gilbert
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There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be.. a prudent insurance policy. Elizabeth Gilbert
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove...
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Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. Elizabeth Gilbert
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The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope! ) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up. if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be. a prudent insurance policy. Elizabeth Gilbert
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He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart. To find the balance you want, " Ketut spoke through his translator, "this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God. Elizabeth Gilbert
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Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying, 'Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I am voicing in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.' There is a reason that we refer to leaps-of-faith, because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove that their faith is rational; it isn't. If they were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark. Elizabeth Gilbert
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A family in my sister's neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace." She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles, " and proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this IS grace. Elizabeth Gilbert
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My friend Bob, who is both a student of Yoga and a neuroscientist, told me that he was always agitated by this idea of the chakras, that he wanted to actually see them in a dissected human body in order to believe they existed. But after a particularly transcendent meditative experience, he came away with a new understanding of it. He said, ' Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true . Elizabeth Gilbert
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You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Elizabeth Gilbert
Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?
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Someone has to write all those stories: why not me? Elizabeth Gilbert
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Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors.. In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real. Elizabeth Gilbert
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I know a woman who gets tattoos all the time. She acquires new tattoos the way I might buy a new pair of earrings. She wakes up in the morning and announces, "I think I'll go get a new tattoo today." If you ask her what kind of tattoo she's planning on getting, she'll say casually, "I dunno…. I'll figure it out when I get to the tattoo shop. Or I'll just let the artist surprise me." Now, this woman is not a teenager. She's a grown woman with adult children, and she runs a successful business. She's also really cool, uniquely beautiful, and one of the freest spirits I've ever met. When I asked her how she could mark up her body so casually and so permanently, she said, "Oh, but you misunderstand: It's not permanent! It's temporary." Confused, I asked, "You mean, all your tattoos are temporary?" She smiled like a sexy rock 'n roll Buddha and said, "No, honey. My tattoos are permanent – it's my BODY that's temporary. And so is yours. We're here on earth for a very short while. I just want to decorate my temporary self as playfully and beautifully as I can, while I still have time." I love this so much, I can't even tell you. I myself am not covered with tattoos. (Although I do have two of them. Before I went traveling for Eat, Pray, Love, I had two words written into my forearms in white ink: COURAGE and COMPASSION.) But I do want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life I can. I don't just mean physically. I mean emotionally, spiritual, intellectually. I don't want to be afraid of bright colors, or big love, or major decisions, or new experiences, or risky creative endeavors, or sudden changes, or even great failure. Elizabeth Gilbert
88
I don't sit around waiting for passion to strike me. I keep working steadily, because I believe it is our privilege as humans to keep making things. Most of all, I keep working because I trust that creativity is always trying to find me, even when I have lost sight of it. Elizabeth Gilbert
I want God to play in my bloodstream the way...
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I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water. Elizabeth Gilbert
90
[Saint Anthony] said, in his solitude, he sometimes encountered devils who looked like angels, and other times he found angels who looked like devils. When asked how he could tell the difference, the saint said that you can only tell which is which by the way you feel after the creature has left your company. Elizabeth Gilbert
Religion is for those who don't want to go to...
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Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there. Elizabeth Gilbert
92
In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite. Elizabeth Gilbert
You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the...
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You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words. Elizabeth Gilbert
94
What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together -- in misery, but happy to not be apart. Elizabeth Gilbert
95
With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me? Elizabeth Gilbert
That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group,...
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That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed. Elizabeth Gilbert
Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening...
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Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams. Elizabeth Gilbert
Given that life is so short, do I really want...
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Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon? Elizabeth Gilbert
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Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have..undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It's because he doesn't care! He's in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery. I am so tired of saying no, waking up in the morning and recalling every single thing I ate the day before, counting every calorie I consumed so I know just how much self loathing to take into the shower. I'm going for it. I have no interest in being obese, I'm just through with the guilt. So this is what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish this pizza, and then we are going to go watch the soccer game, and tomorrow we are going to go on a little date and buy ourselves some bigger jeans. Elizabeth Gilbert
My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over...
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My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher. Elizabeth Gilbert