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Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes - Page 5

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In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Love, Heartbreak, Character
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.20, A&C Black

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
Girl, Dark, Thinking
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.183, A&C Black

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Love, Leaving, Impossible
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.13, Bloomsbury Publishing

God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Inspirational, Funny, Girl
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.23, A&C Black

When we are mindful of every nuance of our natural world, we finally get the picture: that we are only given one dazzling moment of life here on Earth, and we must stand before that reality both humbled and elevated, subject to every law of our universe and grateful for our brief but intrinsic participation with it.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Grateful, Reality, Law
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.495, A&C Black

Lay your wishes aside for a spell, and look deep into what you believe about yourself. Make sure your beliefs about your own life are anchored in greatness, in holiness, in worth, in grace, in joy, in excitement -in internal certainties rather than external circumstances. Because that belief? That's where you're heading, no matter what it may look like on the outside.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Believe, Greatness, Joy

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
Love, Heartbreak, Differences
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.366, A&C Black

You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it's all coming from you.

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

At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that's when God let me go, let me slide through His fingers with this last compassionate, unspoken message: You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Realization, Unions, May

When I get lonely these days, I think: So BE lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Lonely, Loneliness, Being Single
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.67, A&C Black

Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Nice, Men, Years
"'Eat, Pray, Love' author tackles marriage". Interview with A. Pawlowski, www.cnn.com. January 5, 2010.

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business-not always necessarily a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything is flaking away into... rhetoric and plot.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Real, Mean, Escaping
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything”, p.120, Bloomsbury Publishing

Offer it up personally,then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven and unforgiving. I thought of how many people have had siblings or friends or children or lovers disappear from their lives before precious words of clemency or absolution could be passed along. How do the survivors of terminated relationships ever endure the pain of unfinished business? From that place of meditation, I found the answer-you can finish the business yourself, from within yourself. It's not only possible, it's essential.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Children, Pain, Sibling
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.177, A&C Black

Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It’s because he doesn’t care! He’s in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery

Elizabeth Gilbert
Girl, Years, Gentleman

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Men, Demon
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.236, A&C Black

Marriage is those two thousand indistinguishable conversations, chatted over two thousand indistuinguishable breakfasts, where intimacy turns like a slow wheel. How do you measure the worth of becoming that familiar to somebody—so utterly well known and so thoroughly ever-present that you become an almost invisible necessity, like air?

Elizabeth Gilbert
Love, Marriage, Air

I have had work or ideas come through me from a source that I honestly cannot identify. And what is that thing? And how are we to relate to it in a way that will not make us lose our minds, but, in fact, might actually keep us sane?

Elizabeth Gilbert
Motivation, Inspiration, Ideas
"Your elusive creative genius". Ted Talks, www.ted.com. February, 2009.

Why they always look so serious in Yoga? You make serious face like this, you scare away good energy. To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver. Practice tonight at hotel. Not to hurry, not to try too hard. Too serious, you make you sick. You can calling the good energy with a smile. (From Ketut Liyer, the Balinese healer)

Elizabeth Gilbert
Dirty, Yoga, Practice
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.216, A&C Black

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Love, Inspirational, Marriage
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “Committed: A Sceptic Makes Peace With Marriage”, p.32, A&C Black

I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Stuff, Neighbor, Force

Devotion is diligence without assurance

Elizabeth Gilbert
Devotion, Diligence, Assurance
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.167, A&C Black

Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Faith, Courage, Dark
Elizabeth Gilbert (2010). “The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims”, p.167, A&C Black

I have a rigid self-accountability. You have to work hard.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Hard Work, Self, Accountability

I never promised the universe that I would write brilliantly; I only promised the universe that I would write.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Writing, Universe
"Thoughts on Writing". www.elizabethgilbert.com.

If we never leave our house except to drive to work, do we need to be even remotely aware of this powerful, humbling, extraordinary and eternal life force that surges and ebbs around us all the time? Apparently not. Because we have stopped paying attention.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Powerful, House, Needs
Elizabeth Gilbert (2009). “The Last American Man”, p.13, A&C Black

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