Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things th...

But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's...

The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is be...

But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map ...

Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already b...

Offer it up personally,then. Right now. I thought of how many people go to their graves unforgiven a...

Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll ...

I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I ...

You know, why at the end of your life should you assemble thousands of pages of 'Why am I so sad, wh...

Her solitary nature means she needs a family to keep her from loneliness my gregarious nature means ...

God dwells within you, as you.

The inability to open up to hope is what blocks trust, and blocked trust is the reason for blighted ...

Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.

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

Guilt's just your ego's way of tricking you into thinking that you're making moral progress. Don't f...

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of ...

So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy...

Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people it's also a political and economic contra...

The love that moves the sun and the other stars.

Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advanc...

Creativity is a crushing chore and a glorious mystery. The work wants to be made, and it wants to be...

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

I think it's wonderful when a love story begins with a great deal of romance and affection, passion ...

Step forward out of your own lingering residual sense of smallness, take up every inch of life that ...

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.

If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every de...

Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.

I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-...

We need courage to take ourselves seriously, to look closely and without flinching, to regard the th...

What if we just acknowledged that we have a bad relationship, and we stuck it out, anyway? What if w...

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something ...

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri ...

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - ...

He said, "Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a...

My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with peopl...

As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- t...

Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, 'This blows ass.' She nods sympathetically. S...

... you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendenc...

So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt t...

I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the wall...

To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firm...

The Yogic path is about disentangling the built-in glitches of the human condition, which I'm going ...

Destiny, I feel is also a relationship-a play between grace and willful self-effort. Half of it you ...

I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply des...

Your tears are my prayers.

The Hopi Indians thought that the world’s religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that th...

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate i...

At that moment of realization (that union with God is always present), that's when God let me go, le...

I've come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call "The Physics of The Quest" —...

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. T...

Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or ...

There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whisk...

What do I believe that I deserve in this life?

Or, as Sextus, the ancient Pythagorian philosopher, said, "The wise man is always similar to himself...

To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business—not alwa...

What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.

In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these writ...

Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth r...

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We crea...

I knew then that this is how God loves us all and receives us all, and that there is no such thing i...

... both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish...

But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy g...

In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means ...

I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celib...

Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an ent...

The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.

You have been to hell, Ketut?"He smiled. Of course he's been there.What's it like in hell?" Same lik...

That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what ego does. It keeps you fe...

This much I do know - I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices an...

If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him.

One instant, you're just a regular Joe, schlepping through your mundane life, and then suddenly - wh...

I think it's unfortunate that there exists only one path in America to complete social legitimacy, a...

One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation.

The child is taught form earliest consciousness that she has these four brothers with her in the wor...

I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might act...

... "The world is afflicted with death and decay, therefore the wise do not grieve, knowing the term...

Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of th...

You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the s...

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic e...

I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me....

When you're lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For th...

Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over... himself, fully d...

Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in deligh...

But I love him.""So love him.""But I miss him.""So miss him. Send him love and light every time you ...

Every religion in the world has had a subset of devotees who seek a direct, transcendent experience ...

Venice is beautiful, but like a Bergman movie is beautiful; you can admire it, but you don't really ...

Fear--who cares?

I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wond...

I was doing something I'd never done before. And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot ye...

This is what we are like. Collectively, as a species, this is our emotional landscape. I met an old ...

Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely express...

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this p...

I look at the Augusteum,and I think that perhaps my life has not actually been so chaotic, after all...

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, ...

Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure.Ours is an entertainment seeking-nation, bu...

The drums are slamming, rhythmic, exciting. As the minutes pass, it feels to me like we are collecti...

I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with yo...

London? Paris? Berlin? Zurich? Maybe Brussels, center of the young union? They all strive to outdo o...

Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, an...

He showed me a sketch he'd drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standin...