Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

258 Sourced Quotes

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years — I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

Elizabeth Gilbert
I was full of a hot, powerful sadness and would have loved to burst into the comfort of tears, but tried hard not to, remembering something my Guru once said — that you should never give yourself a chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice staying strong, instead.

Elizabeth Gilbert
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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
It is not we as individuals, then, who must bend uncomfortably around the institution of marriage; rather, it is the institution of marriage that has to bend uncomfortably around us.

Elizabeth Gilbert
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
You have the opposite of poker face. You have like.. miniature golf face.

Elizabeth Gilbert
I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn't wake him to share in my distress.

Elizabeth Gilbert
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...

Elizabeth Gilbert
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship — a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Devotion is diligence without assurance. Faith is a way of saying "Yes, I pre-accept the terms of the universe and I embrace in advance what I am presently incapable of understanding.

Elizabeth Gilbert
We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure—your perfection—is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.

Elizabeth Gilbert
We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses—one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is—which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?

Elizabeth Gilbert
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.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Your father only has one foot on this earth. And really, really long legs...

Elizabeth Gilbert
Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for giant squid, I cannot have a baby.

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
That's just your ego, trying to make sure it stays in charge. This is what ego does. It keeps you feeling separate, keeps you with a sense of duality, tries to convince you that you're flawed and broken and alone instead of whole.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent—you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So, put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me—it will at least be taken into consideration.

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
Every healthy marriage is composed of walls and windows. The windows are the aspects of your relationship that are open to the world—that is, the necessary gaps through which you interact with family and friends; the walls are the barriers of trust behind which you guard the most intimatesecrets of your marriage.

Elizabeth Gilbert
The whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions — electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us… When we cease all argument and debate — both internal and external — our true questions can be heard and answered…That is the gathering of magic.

Elizabeth Gilbert
A creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life, and a hell of a lot more interesting life. Living in this manner-continually and stubbornly bringing forth the jewels that are hidden within you-is a fine art, in and of itself.

Elizabeth Gilbert
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
What profound reward you must glean from studying the world so closely....Too many people turn away from small wonders, I find. There is so much more potency to be found in detail than generalities, but most souls cannot train themselves to sit still for it.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones.... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water.

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
We were taught to be dependable, responsible, the top of our classes at school, the most organized and efficient babysitters in town, the very miniature models of our hardworking farmer/nurse mother, a pair of junior Swiss Army knives, born to multitask.

Elizabeth Gilbert
You are still young, so you think only of your own self. You do not notice the tribulations that occur all around you, to other people. Do not protest; it is true. I am not condemning you. I was as selfish as you, when I was your age. It is the custom of the young to be selfish... But someday you will understand that nobody passes through this world without suffering-no matter what you think of them and their supposed good fortune.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Do you think there's any way humans can love each other without complication?

Elizabeth Gilbert
We can change our wives, he said. We can change our jobs, our nationalities and even our religions, but we can never change our team.

Elizabeth Gilbert