Top 652 Quotes & Sayings by Elizabeth Gilbert - Page 2

I was a bartender for a long time, so I know how to make drinks, but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did, and why I get to produce more writing than she did, and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.

I don't hate humanity and I'm not interested in people who do. Although, it's funny, actually, some of my favorite writers really do. Like Martin Amis. My dirty secret. 'London Fields' is one of my favorite books ever. And it's indefensible! But he's so funny... I forgive him everything.

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers, and I grew up in a very funny, conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.

We set up one rule in our house, which is, 'Guests of guests cannot bring guests.' That rule was required because that happened one weekend, and we finally said, 'Okay, you know what? That's a little too much.'

Nobody until very recently would have thought that their husband was supposed to be their best friend, confidante, intellectual soul mate, co-parent, inspiration.

I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion and excitement, that's how it should be. But I don't necessarily know that it's the wisest thing in the world to expect that it ends there, or that it should, 30 years down the road, still look as it did on the night of your first kiss.

I don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.

I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.

I've come to realize that the contemporary creative culture is not generating the best possible outcome.

Childlessness doesn't make people selfish; selfishness makes people selfish.

There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

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.

Success isn't about acquiring things, it's about discovering your life purpose and following the call

We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

There's always another level up. There's always another ascension. More grace, more light, more generosity, more compassion, more to shed, more to grow.

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... 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 I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.

You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.

Your fear is the most boring thing about you.

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.

Watch for the people whose eyes light up when you talk about your dream. Those are the people you keep.

I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine.

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.

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

Embrace the glorious mess that you are

God dwells within you, as you.

Everything good I've ever gotten in life, I only got because I gave something else up.

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

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.

Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly.

The world is like a dropped pie most of the time. Don't kill yourself trying to put it back together. Just grab a fork and eat some of it off the floor. Then carry on.

True power comes from standing in your own truth and walking your own path.

I decide every day that I love Creativity enough to accept that Fear will always come with it. And I talk to Fear all the time, speaking to it with love and respect, saying to it: “I know that you are Fear, and that your job is to be afraid. And you do your job really well! I will never ask you to leave me alone or to be silent, because you have a right to speak your own voice, and I know that you will never leave me alone or be silent, anyhow. But I need you to understand that I will always choose Creativity over you.

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I can read and eat and study. I can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life-whether I will see them as curses or opportunities. I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Your home is whatever in this world you love more than you love yourself.

Balance is not letting anyone love you less than you love yourself.

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.

the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.

Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It's your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.

The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.

What are you willing to give up, in order to become who you really need to be?

If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to 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 the truth will not be withheld from you.

I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

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. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

I think I deserve something beautiful.

Being content with what you have already is an art form that leads to a peace that can’t be replaced by anything else.

There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time.

If you're going to answer the call and you're going to transform and you're going to change, get ready. It is not a day at the beach.

a woman's place is in the kitchen...sitting in a comfortable chair, with her feet up, drinking a glass of wine and watching her husband cook dinner.

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

Mistakes will be made. Failure will occur. You pick yourself up and carry on.

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.

I never wanted to be the person that waited for a stranger to come to town - I wanted to be the stranger!