Elizabeth M. Gilbert is an American author. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, which as of December 2010 had spent 199 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list, and which was also made into a film by the same name in 2010. Profoundly inspirational Elizabeth Gilbert quotes will challenge the way you think, and help guide you through any life experience.
If you’re searching for quotes by famous authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of profound Ernest Hemingway quotes, amazing Franz Kafka quotes and top Fyodor Dostoevsky quotes.
Famous Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes
The center is everywhere wherever people are living out their lives. It’s a city with a million centers.
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.
In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.
At some point, you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.
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 and you were in the best possible place in the world for it in a beautiful place of worship, surrounded by grace.
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark
To be fully seen by somebody, then, and to be loved anyhow this is a human offering that can border on the miraculous.
Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.
I met an old lady once, almost one hundred years old, and she told me, There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who’s in charge?
Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.
Real, sane, mature love the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up te kids after school is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.
You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.
As an old friend of mine once told me, you can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.
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.
Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.
You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it.
You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.
As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff of it is bad for you.
To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.
You were given life; it is your duty and also your entitlement as a human being to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.
To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
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.
Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme Self who is eternally at peace. That supreme Self is our true identity, universal and divine.
It all goes away. Eventually, everything goes away.
Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face first and full speed into the dark.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
On the other hand, the Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.
You were given life; it is your duty and also your entitlement as a human being to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.
I wondered, Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?
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
When I get lonely these days, I think: So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.
When you’re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you’ve just wandered off the path, that you’ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and it’s time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you don’t even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
I think I deserve something beautiful.
The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That’s where you need to go.
Some days are meant to be counted, others are meant to be weighed.
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.
The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.
I was doing something I’d never done before. A small thing, granted, but how often do I get to say that? And what will I be able to do tomorrow that I cannot yet do today?
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.
When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.
I crossed the street to walk in the sunshine.
But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead.
I am a better person when I have less on my plate.
Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.
To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have four legs instead of two.
Be the weirdo who dares to enjoy.
That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.
You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.
We don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.
Done is better than good.
Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.
It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.
But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilling yearnings.
Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?
As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you.
Attempts at originality can often feel forced and precious, but authenticity has quiet resonance that never fails to stir me.
Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.
It’s a simple and generous rule of life that whatever you practice, you will improve at.
I wondered, Why have I been chasing happiness my whole life when bliss was here the entire time?
What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?
Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy.
Perfectionism is just fear in fancy shoes and a mink coat.
We must take care of our families wherever we find them.
Live a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity than by fear.
The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.
Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.
Lucky is the soul whose only troubles are self inflicted.
A good enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.
If you clear out all of that space in your mind you would have a door way
Whatever you do, try not to dwell too long on your failures. You don’t need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.
You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes and failures.
The clock is ticking, and the world is spinning, and we simply do not have time anymore to think so small.
Done is better than good.
So many people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills.
