Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

258 Sourced Quotes

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

Elizabeth Gilbert
The best we can do then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally - no matter what insanity is transpiring out there.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human being a literal anatomy and a poetic anatomy. One, you can see; one, you cannot. One is made of bones and teeth and flesh; the other is made of energy and memory and faith. But they are both equally true.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you - the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love - may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave.

Elizabeth Gilbert
The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, Let go.

Elizabeth Gilbert
My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: "I want a spiritual teacher.

Elizabeth Gilbert
We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.

Elizabeth Gilbert
He was still my romantic hero and I was still his living dream

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

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

Elizabeth Gilbert
I'm so excited about school. I'm such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me :)

Elizabeth Gilbert
For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.

Elizabeth Gilbert
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
The four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry.

Elizabeth Gilbert
There's a crack (or cracks) in everyone, that's how the light of God gets in.

Elizabeth Gilbert
Who loves you most? Who loves you best? Who thinks of you when others rest?

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