Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.

Once the troublesome mind begins to compose speeches and dream up arguments, especially if these are clever, it will soon imagine it is doing important work. But if you can surpass those thoughts, Teresa explained, and ascend toward God, it is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired.

What a stark and stunning thing was life—that such a cataclysm can enter and depart so quickly, and leave such wreckage behind!

You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures. You

We are fiddle, fork, and spoon, We are dancing with the moon, If you'd like to steal a kiss from us, You'd better steal one soon!

I'm aware that many things were not better in the 1940s. Underarm deodorants and air-conditioning were woefully inadequate, for instance, so everybody stank like crazy, especially in the summer, and also we had Hitler.

Love like that is a deep well, with steep sides. Once you fall in, that's it—you will love that person always

Žmogus-nei diev? marionet?, nei savo likimo šeimininkas. Jis turi truput? ir vieno, ir kito. Per gyvenim? mes šuoliuojame lyg cirko artistai, raiti ant dviej? šalia lekian?i? arkli?: viena koja - ant vieno arklio, vadinamo likimu, kita - ant arklio, vadinamo laisva valia. Kiekvien? dien? reikia klausti, kuris arklys likimas, o kuris - laisva valia, d?l kurio arklio nereikia jaudintis, o kur? turi paspausti.

Which is to say, the Romans didn't believe that an exceptionally gifted person was a genius; they believed that an exceptionally gifted person had a genius.

Inspiration is always trying to work with me. So I sit there and I work, too.

Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in comon with Love.

I encourage makers to recognize that when you pull your ego out of the game, your work can become a series of joyful collaborations (between artist and mystery, between artist and peers, between artist and audience). The important thing is to take responsibility for continuing to show up for your side of the bargain.

Ajalugu tunneb ainult kahte küsimust, mis inimesi võitlusse tõukab: Kui siiras on sinu armastus? Ja: Kelle käes on ohjad?. Kõige muuga saab kuidagimoodi hakkama.

What I mean is- find somebody new to love someday. Take the time you need to heal, but don't forget to eventually share your heart with someone

And while the paths and outcomes of creative living will vary wildly from person to person, I can guarantee you this: 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.

If faith were rational, it wouldn't be—by definition—faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch.

Everything reminds us of something. But once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours.

I could ever tell him about myself that he would judge or criticize. My own glints of darkness did not frighten him; he had such darkness of his own that nobody else's shadows scared him. Most of all, though, he listened.

Of course you are. I'm sorry for many of the things I've done, too. Everyone is sorry. It's good to be sorry—but don't make a fetish of it.

You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others. I would so much rather you wrote a book in order to entertain yourself than to help me. Or if your subject matter is darker and more serious, I would prefer that you made your art in order to save yourself or to relive yourself of some great psychic burden, rather than to save or relieve us.

But you do not need your fear in the realm of creative expression.

The man is a perfect dragon for protocol.

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

And when I pray, I shall ask the Lord in heaven whatever happened to my father's ethics - or did he never have any? Henry leapt to his feet and pounded both fists on his desk in rage. You little idiot! he roared. I never had any!