Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

Which left me with nothing but a dazzled heart and the sense that I live in a most remarkable world, thick with mysteries. It all called to mind the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington's memorable explanation of how the universe works: "Something unknown is doing we don't know what." But the best part is: I don't need to know what.

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

You can always find girls who can dance like angels, and some boys, too. But to get a man who can dance like a man—that's not easily found. This kid is everything I'd hoped he would be.")

Without bravery, they would never know the world as richly as it longs to be known.

Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else's life?

They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me—Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well.

Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life. Create whatever you want to create—and let it be stupendously imperfect, because it's exceedingly likely that nobody will even notice. And that's awesome.

I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of *reaching* his highest potential. … Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.

There was no better path to autonomy for an ambitious young businesswoman than to be married off to a respectable corpse.

why is a hard question to answer in any language

I am touched that you are trying to comprehend me. A friend could not be more loving.

I'm tired of being a skeptic, I'm irritated by spiritual prudence and I feel bored and parched by empirical debate. I don't want to hear it anymore. I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

At no point in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.

From the center of my life, there came a great fountain…

They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscate my identity; but he always does that. Then loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours.

as Walt Whitman once wrote, stand 'apart from the pulling and hauling…amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary… both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it all.

Los ingredientes de la oscuridad y los de la luz están presentes en todos nosotros y depende del individuo (o de la familia, de la sociedad) decidir qué va a potenciar: sus virtudes o su malevolencia. La locura de este planeta procede, en gran parte, de la incapacidad humana para alcanzar un equilibrio personal virtuoso. La demencia (colectiva e individual) es la consecuencia.

I'm disappointed in everybody," she said after a long silence. "In who, exactly?" I was thinking she would say the Nazis. "The adults," she said. "All of them. How did they let the world get so out of control?

The world ain't straight. You grow up thinking things are a certain way. You think there are rules. You think there's a way that things have to be. You try to live straight. But the world doesn't care about your rules, or what you believe.

Si quieres controlar tu vida, tienes que controlar tu mente. En lugar de intentar controlar todo lo demás, céntrate en eso. Olvídate de todo lo demás. Porque, si no aprendes a dominar tu pensamiento, nunca vas a levantar cabeza».

quién de nosotros vive sin hacer ciertos sacrificios?

en un ser humano también existe una anatomía literal y una anatomía poética. Una se ve; la otra, no. Una está hecha de huesos y dientes y carne; la otra está hecha de energía y memoria y fe. Pero ambas son igual de verdaderas».

You don't get any special credit, is what I'm saying, for knowing how to be afraid of the unknown. Fear is a deeply ancient instinct, in other words, and an evolutionarily vital one . . . but it ain't especially smart.