Top 500 Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

303. “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

304. “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

305. “A man that can cook you a proper meal that is like a weekday meal – which I think cannot be better than in the form of a roast chicken – that’s the greatest.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

306. “Anyhow, the older I get, the less impressed I become with originality. These days, I’m far more moved by authenticity. Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

307. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

309. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

312. “My work is incredibly important to me personally. It brings me joy and it brings me life and it brings me meaning. It doesn’t necessarily have to be important to the people who read it.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

313. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

315. “I fell in love with him, and it made no sense for me to fall in love with him. We could not possibly have been more different. But maybe that’s where love grows best – in the deep space that exists between polarities.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

316. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

318. “When women are gathered together with no men around, they don’t have to be anything in particular; they can just be.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

319. “You are always digging in the past or poking at the future, but rarely do you rest in this moment.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

320. “Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job o fa creative person... Frustration is not an interruption of your process; frustration is the process.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

321. “Life goes on, after all, and one must always seek the lesson even through the sorrow. Never remain static; never stop collecting information. And.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

322. “A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

323. “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

324. “Nothing is less efficient than perfectionism.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

325. “It’s so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it’s been polluted.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

326. “Well, just remember – all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

327. “Lastly, remember what W. C. Fields had to say on this point: “It ain’t what they call you; it’s what you answer to.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

328. “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

329. “I wonder if I am capable of being somebody’s sun, somebody’s everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else’s life?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

330. “Whatever this feeling is – this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

331. “Dear me, how I love a library.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

332. “Love is like that is a deep well with steep sides. Once you fall in, that’s it. You will love that person always.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

333. “You never know how a good quest is going to end.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

334. “Power is a neutral energy source, like tofu. It’s what you do with it that gives it flavor.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

335. “I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

336. “At the end of the day I am a writer, and if I don’t take care of this, no one else will.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

337. “I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn’t wake him to share in my distress.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

338. “She did a little soul-searching, the way one does on the big birthdays. She asked herself when was the last time she’d felt truly light, joyous, and – yes – creative in her own skin. To her shock, she realized that it had been decades since she’d felt that way.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

339. “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

340. “The guardians of high culture will try to convince you that the arts belong only to a chosen few, but they are wrong and they are also annoying.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

341. “People will tell you not to waste your youth having too much fun, but they’re wrong. Youth is an irreplaceable treasure, and the only respectable thing to do with irreplaceable treasure is to waste it. So do the right thing with your youth, Vivian – squander it.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

343. “When I diagnose my depression now, I think it was partially about saying goodbye to these kids that I always expected to have but already knew that I wouldn’t.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

344. “That competition and the struggle for existence is the mechanism behind this state of perpetual change.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

345. “And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian housewife, that I kept my rosemary alive outside all winter.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

346. “It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

347. “Marriage is – among other things – a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

348. “Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

349. “If I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

350. “The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there’s a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert