Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

... the rules of transcendence insist that you will not advance even one inch closer to divinity as long as you cling to even one last seductive thread of blame.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Religious ceremonies are of paramount importance in Bali ( an island, don't forget, with seven unpredictable volcanoes on it-you would pray, too).
Elizabeth Gilbert
Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most poeple who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be - that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.
Elizabeth Gilbert
You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The results of my work don't have much to do with me. I can only be in charge of producing the work itself. That's a hard enough job. I refuse to take on additional jobs, such as trying to police what anybody thinks about my work once it leaves my desk.
Elizabeth Gilbert
sometimes the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else - Richard
Elizabeth Gilbert
The Buddha referred to married people as “householders.” He even gave clear instructions as to how one should be a good householder: Be nice to your spouse, be honest, be faithful, give alms to the poor, buy some insurance against fire and flood . . . I’m dead serious: The Buddha literally advised married couples to buy property insurance.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you had to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master and beat it. That was his job, and he did great, but now it's over. Problem is, you can't accept that this relationship had a real short shelf life. You're like a dog at the dump, baby - you're just lickin' at an empty tin can, trying to get more nutrition out of it. And if you're not careful, that can's gonna get stuck on your snout forever and make your life miserable. So drop it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
One instant, you're just a regular Joe, schlepping through your mundane life, and then suddenly - what is this? - nothing has changed, yet you feel stirred by a grace, swollen with wonder, overflowing with bliss. Everything - for no reason whatsoever - is perfect.
Elizabeth Gilbert
So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect—only if they happen to be talking about Judaism.
Elizabeth Gilbert
No outbreak of jealousy or malice has ever been welcomed in God’s eyes.” Beatrix continued, “nor shall such an outbreak ever be welcomed in the eyes of your family. If you have sentiments within you that are unpleasant or uncharitable, let them fall stillborn to the ground.
Elizabeth Gilbert
You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That's the divine contract of a little something we call free will.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away...meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny.” - Wayan
Elizabeth Gilbert
Just say what you want to say . . . and say it with all your heart.
Elizabeth Gilbert
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
Elizabeth Gilbert
Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going to over-simply define here as the heartbreaking inability to sustain contentment. Different schools of thought over the centuries have found different explanation for man's apparently inherently flawed state. Taoists call it imbalance, Buddism calls it ignorance, Islam blames our misery on rebellion against God, and the Judeo-Christian tradition attributes all our suffering to original sin. Freudians say that unhappiness is the inevitable result of the clash between our natural drives and civilization's needs. (As my friend Deborah the psychologist explains it: "Desire is the design flaw.") The Yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. We don't realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine. 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
Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time - when pursued like bandit - will behave like one; always remaining one country 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. At some point, as Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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
At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.
Elizabeth Gilbert
There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.
Elizabeth Gilbert
I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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 both are equally true.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness my gregarious nature means I will never have to worry about being alone...
Elizabeth Gilbert
You have no idea how strong my love is!
Elizabeth Gilbert
He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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
But I love him.""So love him.""But I miss him.""So miss him. Send him love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
In Venice in the Middle Ages there was once a profession for a man called a codega--a fellow you hired to walk in front of you at night with a lit lantern, showing you the way, scaring off thieves and demons, bringing you confidence and protection through the dark streets.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Don't we have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for awhile.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Fear--who cares?
Elizabeth Gilbert
If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: "Nobody ever died from splitting up furniture.") It's the emotional recoil that kills you, the shock of stepping off the track of a conventional lifestyle and losing all the embracing comforts that keep so many people on that track forever.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
Elizabeth Gilbert
It may seem a simple pleasure to spoil our children with a treat of sugar, but that pleasure becomes a sin when the sugar was grown by human beings held in unspeakable misery.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one.
Elizabeth Gilbert
... both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish...
Elizabeth Gilbert
... the appreciation of pleasure can be an anchor of one's humanity.
Elizabeth Gilbert
During my first few weeks in Italy, all my Protestant synapses were zinging in distress, looking for a task. I wanted to take on pleasure like a homework assignment, or a giant science fair project.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one....This is the cause of that great sad American stereotype- the overstressed executive who goes on vacation, but who cannot relax.
Elizabeth Gilbert
That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.
Elizabeth Gilbert
At no point in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself." -
Elizabeth Gilbert
Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say - no detail spared in the quest for perfection.
Elizabeth Gilbert
At some point, you really just have to finish your work and release it as is-if only so you can go on and make other things with a glad and determined heart.
Elizabeth Gilbert
We must understand the need for perfectionism is a corrosive waste of time, because nothing is ever beyond criticism. No matter how many hours you spend to render something flawless, somebody will always be able to find fault with it.
Elizabeth Gilbert
We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the things that frighten us in life and art with wonder.
Elizabeth Gilbert
As someone who struggles with anxiety and cowardice, as we all do, I’m profoundly inspired by. . . . full-on commitment to wonder, to wonder as a response to anguish or difficulty. It makes everything a puzzle, right? A catastrophe is nothing but a puzzle with the volume of drama turned up very high.
Elizabeth Gilbert
The Hopi Indians thought that the world’s religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm.
Elizabeth Gilbert
But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s still two human beings trying to get along, so it’s going to become complicated. And love is always complicated. But still humans must try to love each other, darling. We must get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Here’s another example of the difference in our worldviews. 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 then 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
We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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 even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite...
Elizabeth Gilbert
I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Richard didn't even have time to ask if I thought I'd ever amount to anything in this life before I looked him eye to eye and said, "I already have, mister.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The kundalini shakti - the supreme energy of the divine - will take you there.
Elizabeth Gilbert