Top 500 Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Children don’t have any honor, you see, and they aren’t expected to, because it’s too difficult for them. It’s too painful. But to become an adult, one must step into the field of honor. Everything will be expected of you now. You will need to be vigilant in your principles. Sacrifices will be demanded. You will be judged.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

252. “The old cobbler had believed in something he called “the signature of all things”-namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity’s betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator’s love.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

253. “Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

254. “I have a friend, an aspiring musician, whose sister said to her one day, quite reasonably, “What happens if you never get anything out of this? What happens if you pursue your passion forever, but success never comes? How will you feel then, having wasted your entire life for nothing?” My friend, with equal reason, replied, “If you can’t see what I’m already getting out of this, then I’ll never be able to explain it to you.” When it’s for love, you will always do it anyhow.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

255. “Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

256. “Your tears are my prayers.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

257. “Thank you for the tribute of your honesty,” he said – which I thought then, and still think, was one of the most elegant things I’d ever heard anyone say.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

258. “Thich Nhat Hanh has the ability to bring forth the state of peace that we each inherently posses merely by his presence in a room-this is divine power.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

259. “Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

260. “I’ve always been afraid of saying no to people because I don’t want them to be disappointed and dislike me.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

261. “Sometimes out hearts are broken so new light can get in.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

263. “The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

264. “Who the hell do you think you are?” your darkest interior voices will demand. “It’s funny you should ask,” you can reply. “I’ll tell you who I am: I am a child of God, just like anyone else. I am a constituent of this universe. I have invisible spirit benefactors who believe in me, and who labor.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

265. “Martyr says: “Life is pain.” Trickster says: “Life is interesting.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

266. “Divine Time, Geological Time, Human Time, Moss Time.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

267. “After a certain age, time just drizzles down upon your head like rain in the month of March: you’re always surprised at how much of it can accumulate, and how fast.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

268. “Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I’ve learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

269. “The mosquitoes here are big enough to rape a chicken.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

270. “Perfectionism stops people from completing their work, yes – but even worse, it often stops people from beginning their work. Perfectionists.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

271. “Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn’t matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise – you can make anything. So please calm down now and get back to work, okay? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

272. “I think that if you can roast a chicken, you can get whatever you want out of a woman.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

273. “There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny’s molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

274. “When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

275. “Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship – a play between divine grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you have no control over; half of it is absolutely in your hands, and your actions will show measurable consequence. Man.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

276. “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

277. “Of course nobody is required to stand in the field of honor... If you find it too challenging, you may always exit, and then you can remain a child. But if you wish to be a person of character, I’m afraid this is the only way. But it may be painful.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

278. “There’s only one problem with the hero’s journey, it never included women.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

279. “In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

280. “You can butcher the sheep only once. But if you are careful, you can shear the sheep every year.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

281. “The older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

282. “You are worthy, dear one, regardless of the outcome. You will keep making your work, regardless of the outcome. You will keep sharing your work, regardless of the outcome. You were born to create, regardless of the outcome. You will never lose trust in the creative process, even when you don’t understand the outcome.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

283. “Venice seems like a wonderful city in which to die a slow and alcoholic death, or to lose a loved one, or to lose the murder weapon with which the loved one was lost in the first place.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

284. “If I’d had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I’m not sure how I would have slept that night.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

285. “Only the young and stupid are confident about sex and romance.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

286. “Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

287. “I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

288. “To even call somebody “a creative person” is almost laughably redundant; creativity is the hallmark of our species. We have the senses for it; we have the curiosity for it; we have the opposable thumbs for it; we have the rhythm for it; we have the language and the excitement and the innate connection to divinity for it.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

289. “Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

290. “Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be made through you.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

291. “Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

292. “I think it’s a mighty act of human love to remind somebody that they can accomplish things by themselves, and that the world does not automatically owe them any reward, and that they are not as weak and hobbled as they may believe.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

293. “There’s no dishonor in having a job. What is dishonorable is scaring away your creativity by demanding that it pay for your entire existence.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

294. “With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory – most mercifully of all – would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

295. “By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later – again, for its own mysterious reasons.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

296. “Teach your heart that this is destiny.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

297. “Devotion is diligence without assurance.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

298. “My soul, when I tend to it, is a far more expansive and fascinating source of guidance than my ego will ever be, because my soul desires only one thing: wonder. And since creativity is my most efficient pathway to wonder, I take refuge there, and it feeds my soul, and it quiets the hungry ghost – thereby saving me from the most dangerous aspect of myself.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

299. “Because creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know that when courage dies, creativity dies with it. We all know that fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

300. “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