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Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes - Page 25

All Quotes Accomplishment Addiction Art Authority Balance Being Alone Being Single Bliss Bones Character Children Choices Compassion Contentment Country Courage Creativity Curiosity Depression Desire Destiny Devotion Dignity Disappointment Discipline Divorce Earth Effort Ego Energy Expectations Faith Falling In Love Family Fate Feelings Fighting Flying Focus Food Giving Giving Up Grace Greek Grief Growing Up Guilt Happiness Hard Work Healing Heart Heartbreak Heaven Home Honor Hope House Humanity Husband Inspirational Inspiring Intimacy Journey Joy Leaving Letting Go Life Loneliness Lost Love Love Lying Madness Magic Marriage Meditation Metaphor Mom Morning Motivational Opportunity Pain Passion Past Perfection Pleasure Prayer Purpose Reading Reality Religion Resentment Running Sacrifice Sanity School Silence Sleep Solitude Soul Struggle Suffering Surrender Today Tragedy Transformation Trauma Travel Universe Waiting Wall War Water Wife Worry Writing Yoga
I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants; I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.

I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants; I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Recovery, Thinking, Tools
BookBrowse Interview, www.bookbrowse.com.

You have to work ceaselessly on your end to digest and imbibe your opportunities or, I have come to believe, they will gradually slip away and knock on someone else's more receptive door.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Believe, Opportunity, Doors
BookBrowse Interview, www.bookbrowse.com.

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Growth, Doe, World
BookBrowse Interview, www.bookbrowse.com.

Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Strong Women, Disappointment, Struggle
Source: www.believermag.com

I think when you are an aspiring writer, you must write every day. It's not as though anybody will call you up on the phone and say, "I understand you are a very promising, aspiring writer and I'm going to give you this assignment." You have to create it yourself or it's never going to happen.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Thinking, Phones
Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. January, 2010.

Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Sacrifice, Reality, Taught Us
BookBrowse Interview, www.bookbrowse.com.

The nineteenth century was the last moment in history when a relatively educated layperson could follow what was going on in the world of science and invention to a wide degree. Also, there were no "professionals". This was a time when amateur explorers, naturalists and enthusiasts were are still making major contributions to progress.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Progress, Degrees, World

Up until the middle of the nineteenth century, men of science were all believers. Most of the great early English naturalists were also ministers; they were the only ones who had education and leisure for such pursuits. Darwin himself almost became a minister. God's power was always thought to be most easily and obviously revealed in the majestic works of nature.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Men, Leisure, Majestic

You almost can't wait too long [to get married]. The longer you wait, the better off you are going to be. And the happier your kids are going to be, and the happier a mom you are going to be.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Mom, Kids, Long
Goodreads Interview, www.goodreads.com. January 2010.

It is completely acceptable to be tired because it means you're working hard. But it's not acceptable to be stressed because that means things are going wrong or your head is broken.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Tired, Mean, Broken

Women come into marriage with great inflated expectations for what they want this relationship to be, and men don't give it that much thought. Men come into it with reluctance about being capsized or trapped or whatever their fear is. When you check in later, women are disappointed because their expectations have not come to pass, and men are pleasantly surprised.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Men, Expectations, Giving
Source: www.goodreads.com

Never go into debt to become a writer. Always find other ways to support yourself so you can do the work you truly love for the right reasons. Never ask your art to support you. If you ask your art to support you it will either end up comprised or you'll be disappointed with it. It's a lot to ask of creativity for it to provide for you financially. Find a scrappy way to get by and then do the work you love for the reasons you love.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Art, Creativity, Support You

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
People, Joy, Important
Interview with Rachel Khong, therumpus.net. October 29, 2012.

I think another way that you can really harm yourself as an artist is by buying into the mythology that it's really important.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Artist, Thinking, Important
"The Rumpus Interview With Elizabeth Gilbert". Interview with Rachel Khong, therumpus.net. October 29, 2012.

The fantasy of the wedding day is that it represents undeniable public and private truth that you have been chosen. For that one day, you are the most valuable creature in the world - a treasure, a princess, a prize.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Princess, One Day, Wedding Day

What I object to is the hyper-fetishized wedding day, the prioritizing of wedding over marriage. I have a real problem with couples spending far more time discussing the seating arrangement or the color of the bridesmaid's gowns than hashing out, for instance, their feelings about how they intend to handle questions of housework, child-rearing, finances and fidelity for the next four or five decades.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Children, Couple, Real

Modern marriage is first and foremost a romantic and private union, but the tax laws and inheritance laws and religious implications that still surround this institution indicate that marriage has evolved without casting away its earlier purposes or assumptions. It's like we just keep building on this thing, piling new advancements on the old model.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Religious, Law, Advancement

I think of modern marriage as a car strangely fashioned out of an old abandoned horse carriage, built upon the framework of a mule cart. All the original engineering is still there, underneath it all.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Horse, Thinking, Engineering

If I'm being forgiving of myself, I could say I'm somebody who was really hungry for experiences. The same thing that would make me go try to be a trail cook on a ranch was the same thing that would make me want to have sex with a couple cowboys while I was there.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Sex, Couple, Cowboy
Interview with Rachel Khong, therumpus.net. October 29, 2012.

They say that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are people who never learn one way or another anything; there are people who learn from their own mistakes, eventually and with great pain; and then there are the really wise people who learn from other people's mistakes and spare themselves the suffering.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Wise, Pain, Mistake
Interview with Rachel Khong, therumpus.net. October 29, 2012.

All the parts of us that we ever were are always going to be with us. You make space to carry them and you just try not to let them drive. But you can't chuck them out either.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Space, Trying, Chuck
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

I'm still aspiring to be a better and better person, but I think that disappointments have made me gentler with other people and their disappointments, the stuff that they have to carry around and endure.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Disappointment, Thinking, People
Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

A lot of [erotica] was really interestingly disguised in the 19th-century as medical journals. So it would be in the voice of a learned doctor talking about somebody's pathologies. And then it would get really detailed. And then it would get really sweaty. And then you're like, "This isn't a doctor! I would like to see a degree, Mister!"

Elizabeth Gilbert
Doctors, Talking, Voice

I spent a week living as a man. Which was actually, I'm sorry to say, embarrassingly easy for me to do.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Sorry, Men, Week
"Elizabeth Gilbert: An Adventurer Travels Back In Time". "Ask Me Another" with Ophira Eisenberg, www.npr.org. January 16, 2014.

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
Thinking, Compassion, Would Be
"Elizabeth Gilbert, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author, On What It Takes To Get Inspired". Interview with Chantal Pierrat, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 11, 2013.

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