Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert

Nothing is so essential as dignity, girls. Time will reveal who has it, and who has it not.

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

Pero sobre todo les pedía a sus alumnos que fueran valerosos. Sin valor, les enseñaba, nunca serían capaces de desarrollar sus habilidades al máximo. Sin valor no llegarían a conocer el mundo con la profundidad con que este ansía ser conocido. Sin valor sus vidas seguirían siendo pequeñas, mucho más pequeñas probablemente de lo que querían.

There is something magnificent about encouraging someone to step forward into his own self-respect at last—especially when it comes to creating something brave and new.

strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them. The hunt to uncover those jewels—that's creative living. The courage to go on that hunt in the first place—that's what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one. The often surprising results of that hunt—that's what I call Big Magic.

Is it sometimes a difficult path? Sure. Does it make for an interesting life? The most. Will the inevitable difficulties and obstacles associated with creativity make you suffer? That part—cross my heart—is entirely up to you.

In a world of such abundant possibility, many of us simply go limp from indecision. Or we derail our life's journey again and again, backing up to try the doors we neglected on the first round, desperate to get it right this time. Or we become compulsive comparers - always measuring our lives against some other person's life, secretly wondering if we should have taken her path instead.

But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.

Everything is so goddamn scary.

But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are locked in conflict, the whole of the world is contaminated by it.

I also get that we women in particular must work very hard to keep our fantasies as clearly and cleanly delineated from our realities as possible, and that sometimes it can take years of effort to reach such a point of sober discernment.

it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection

Creativity is a gift to the creator not just a gift to the audience.

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?' 'I don't know, honey. But I'm not sure anybody out there really knows what they're doing.

Your ego's job isn't to serve you. Its only job is to keep itself in power. And right now, your ego's scared to death cuz it's about to get downsized. You keep up this spiritual path, baby, and that bad boy's days are numbered. Pretty soon your ego will be out of work, and your heart'll be making all the decisions.

He and I had been talking about jazz (which is to say that he had been talking about jazz, and I had been listening to him talk about jazz, because that is how you talk to a man about jazz)

você é o que você pensa. As suas emoções são escravas dos seus pensamentos, e você é escravo de suas emoções.

Let people have their opinions. More than that—let people be in love with their opinions, just as you and I are in love with ours. But never delude yourself into believing that you require someone else's blessing (or even their comprehension) in order to make your own creative work. And always remember that people's judgments about you are none of your business.

you clear out all that space in your mind that you're using right now to obsess about this guy, you'll have a vacuum there, an open spot—a doorway. And guess what the universe will do with that doorway? It will rush in—God will rush in—and fill you with more love than you ever dreamed. So stop using David to block that door. Let it go.

Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you? Look

I believe that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses, but also by ideas. Ideas are a disembodied, energetic life-form. They are completely separate from us, but capable of interacting with us

He became a poet the way other men become monks: as a devotional practice, as an act of love, and as a lifelong commitment to the search for grace and transcendence. I think this is probably a very good way to become a poet. Or to become anything, really, that calls to your heart and brings you to life.

There is a limit, I have found, to how much you can mourn as "tragic" the death of an older person who has lived a rich life, and who is privileged enough to die surrounded by loved ones. There are so many worse ways to live, after all, and so many worse ways to die. From

my deep and lifelong conviction that the results of my work don't have much to do with me. I can only be in charge of producing the work itself.