Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

A true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

I've never seen any life transformation that didn't begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am.

I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

Tis' better to live your own life imperfectly than to imitate someone else's perfectly.

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

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.

You know, I think that allowing somebody, one mere person to believe that he or she is like, the vessel you know, like the font and the essence and the source of all divine, creative, unknowable, eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile, human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.

The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying;

the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.

we must take care of our families wherever we find them.

We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

Being content with what you have already is an art form that leads to a peace that can’t be replaced by anything else.

There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

Moss is inconceivably strong. Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries. Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master.

You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with.

Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.

Balance is not letting anyone love you less than you love yourself.

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.

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.

And then, in that regal silence, finally - I began to meditate on (and with) God.

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

The world is like a dropped pie most of the time.

Don't kill yourself trying to put it back together. Just grab a fork and eat some of it off the floor. Then carry on.

To sit patiently with a yearning that has not yet been fulfilled, and to trust that, that fulfillment will come, is quite possibly one of the most powerful "magic skills" that human beings are capable of. It has been noted by almost every ancient wisdom tradition

you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead.

God dwells within you, as you.

Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing.

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it's like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.

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

Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender

But never again use another person's body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.

Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.

To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.

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.

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't fall for it, my dear.