Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes
Page 6 of 10

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

254. “It might have been done before, but it hasn’t been done by you!”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

255. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

257. “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

258. “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

259. “The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it well: “So many of us believe in perfection, which ruins everything else, because the perfect is not only the enemy of the good; it’s also the enemy of the realistic, the possible, and the fun.” Perfectionism.”

— 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. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

263. “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

264. “In ancient Greek, the word for the highest degree of human happiness is eudaimonia, which basically means “well-daemoned” – that is, nicely taken care of by some external divine creative spirit guide.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

265. “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

266. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

270. “Devotion is diligence without assurance.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

273. “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

274. “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

275. “The only boring people I know are bored people.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

276. “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

277. “Nobody’s life is interesting enough to warrant a third memoir.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

278. “It used to be that god was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

279. “Fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

280. “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

281. “Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

282. “Sanity and clarity are more important for me and I’m willing to give up a lot of shimmer for it. I’m willing to have more boring friends, who are sane.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

283. “Look – I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

284. “The earliest evidence of recognizable human art is forty thousand years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only ten thousand years old. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story, we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to regularly feed ourselves.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

286. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

289. “The appreciation of pleasure can be the anchor of humanity.”

— 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. “Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

292. “He was powerful and I died of love in his shadow.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

293. “If your goal in life is to become fearless, then I believe you’re already on the wrong path, because the only truly fearless people I’ve ever met were straight-up sociopaths and a few exceptionally reckless three-year-olds – and those aren’t good role models for anyone.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

294. “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

295. “Ever since I’d met Edna Parker Watson, I tried to wear suits whenever possible. Among other lessons, that woman had taught me that a suit will always make you look more chic and important than a dress. And not too much jewelry! “A majority of the time,” Edna said, “jewelry is an attempt to cover up a badly chosen or ill-fitting garment.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

296. “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

297. “Because the truth is, I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment – not entirely human in its origins.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

298. “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

299. “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

300. “Oh, cold world – I have grown so weary of you and all your horrible bathrooms.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert