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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

303. “So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

317. “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

318. “The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

320. “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

321. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

323. “There are so many good reasons to stop complaining if you want to live a more creative life.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

324. “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

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

326. “Never apologize for it, never explain it away, never be ashamed of it. You did your best with what you knew, and you worked with what you had, in the time that you were given. You were invited, and you showed up, and you simply cannot do more than that.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

327. “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

328. “Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody – really want him – it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

329. “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

330. “I have more compassion than if I had led a life where everything worked out exactly as I had planned or if I had never been wounded or if I had never been betrayed or I had never been harmed. I don’t think I would be as good a person.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

331. “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

332. “Famously, Gloria Steinem once advised women that they should strive to become like the men they had always wanted to marry. What I’ve only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father, too.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

335. “Through the mere act of creating something – anything – you might inadvertently produce work that is magnificent, eternal, or important.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

338. “Dear me, how I love a library.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

339. “But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with think, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn’t. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

340. “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

341. “I’m afraid many women do choose the wedding over the marriage. It seems a steep price to pay, but it comes from a place of deep, sad longing to be loved and to have it proven that you are of value.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

342. “Mostly you meet friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on the train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

343. “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

344. “As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies; we’re just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

345. “We’re already separated that’s official but there’s still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

346. “When the time is ripe for certain things, they appear at different places, in the manner of violets coming to light in early spring.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

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

— Elizabeth Gilbert

348. “I don’t think you can say that feminism has made women critical of marriage because women have been critical of marriage for centuries.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert

349. “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

350. “I used to say, ‘Man, I think I’d be a really good dad. I’ll be a great provider. I’m funny; I’ll go on trips with them – I’ll do all sorts of stuff.’ But the momming? I’m not made for that. I have a really good mom; I know what she put into it.”

— Elizabeth Gilbert