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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?
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Tan malo como el tabaco para los pulmones es el rencor para el alma;
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Every city has a single word that defines it, that identifies most poeple who live there. If you could read people's thoughts as they were passing you on the streets of any given place, you would discover that most of them are thinking the same thought. Whatever that majority thought might be - that is the word of the city. And if your personal word does not match the word of the city, then you don't really belong there.
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word
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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82647ec
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My lowest self says: "That person is acting like a total jerk!" My slightly higher self says: "That person is acting like a total jerk right now only because he's going through a really hard time in life, and his parents never taught him how to behave better, and he might have some sort of mild mental illness, and also he has a drinking problem...so I should try to be more compassionate and generous toward sad, tragic, miserable people like..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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His penmanship was shamefully crabbed. Each sentence was a crowded village of capital letters and small letters, living side by side in tight misery, crawling up on one another as though trying to escape the page. His spelling was several degrees beyond arbitrary, and his punctuation brought reason to sigh with unhappiness.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9a33f48
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O trabalho quer ser feito, e quer ser feito atraves de voce.
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work-hard
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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26cf48a
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The trick at every turn was to endure the test of living for as long as possible. The odds of survival were punishingly slim, for the world was naught but a school of calamity and an endless burning furnace of tribulation. But those who survived the world shaped it--even as the world, simultaneously, shaped them.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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always prepared for anything foolish, fun, or
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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En un mundo dominado por el desorden y el desastre y el fraude tal vez solo se pueda confiar en la belleza.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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But why must everything always have a practical application? I'd been such a diligent soldier for years--working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? An..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7c03e93
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Each other, perhaps. Not each other's words, but each other's thoughts. Each other's spirit. If you ask me what I believe, I shall tell you this: the whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions--electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around us. There is a hidden
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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insisted, "until the point is inarguable."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favorite fountain? And then to do it again the ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The classical Indian sages wrote that there are three factors which indicate whether a soul has been blessed with the highest and most auspicious luck in the universe: To have been born a human being, capable of conscious inquiry. To have been born with--or to have developed--a yearning to understand the nature of the universe. To have found a living spiritual master. There
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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fdc6489
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No outbreak of jealousy or malice has ever been welcomed in God's eyes." Beatrix continued, "nor shall such an outbreak ever be welcomed in the eyes of your family. If you have sentiments within you that are unpleasant or uncharitable, let them fall stillborn to the ground."
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friendships
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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7eee584
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Pure creativity is magnificent expressly because it is the opposite of everything else in life that's essential or inescapable (food, shelter, medicine, rule of law, social order, community and familial responsibility, sickness, loss, death, taxes, etc.). Pure creativity is something better than a necessity; it's a gift.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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My friend Bob, who is both a student of Yoga and a neuroscientist, told me that he was always agitated by this idea of the chakras, that he wanted to actually see them in a dissected human body in order to believe they existed. But after a particularly transcendent meditative experience, he came away with a new understanding of it. He said, "Just as there exists in writing a literal truth and a poetic truth, there also exists in a human bei..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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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. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once yo..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b675547
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The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I['m a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to top choki..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Opening up space for ourselves is a life-affirming act, a sacred act. I believe we must all be allowed to affirm and open our own lives, in celebration of the miracle of our existence. I do not believe we were put here on Earth to feel sick and weary and sad forever. I do not believe we were put here to grow old when we are still young. This
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Begin anywhere. Preferably right now. And if greatness should ever accidentally stumble upon you, let it catch you hard at work. Hard at work, and sane.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Trust me, if you want to complain, you'll always find plenty to complain about, even when fortune appears to be shining her favor upon you. But
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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There will be two ships sailing, but you'll be on the Resolution, with Cook himself. Never put yourself in his way. Never speak to him. And if you do speak to him, which you must never do, certainly do to speak to him in the manner in which you have sometimes spoken to me. He will not find it as diverting as I do.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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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!"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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1e7fb6d
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Those who are ill-prepared to endure the battle for survival should perhaps never have attempted living in the first place. The only unforgivable
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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9ff9c9b
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I tell you, Becker," Henry said, "if you make me eat mutton one more night this week, I will have someone shot." "He doesn't really have people shot," Alma reassured Mr. Pike, under her breath. "I had figured that," her guest whispered back, "or else I would be dead already."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a547233
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it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake... they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yoursel..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . .
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby--I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to--I just don't care.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Do you know what I believe, Miss Whittaker? Regarding your question on the origins of human compassion and self-sacrifice? I believe that evolution explains nearly everything about us, and I certainly believe it explains absolutely everything about the rest for the natural world, But I do not believe that evolution alone can account for our unique human consciousness. There is no evolutionary need, you see, for us to have such acute sen..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I'm considered a difficult girl. I have a reputation for needing to be told a good reason to do something before I will do it." ~ Tulsi"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be." This"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The human mind, if dutifully trained, should be able to perform anything we ask of it. It is all just a matter of working hard.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The English travel writer Isabel Bird, famous for her cool and detached prose, seemed scarcely able to keep from exclaiming hubba-hubba as she checked out the rugged men she kept encountering on her trip to America in the 1850s:
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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So the question is not so much "What are you passionate about?" The question is "What are you passionate enough about that you can endure even the most disagreeable aspects of the work." --
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I simply vowed to the universe that I would write forever, regardless of the result. I promised that I would try to be brave about it, and grateful, and as uncomplaining as I could possibly be. I also promised that I would never ask writing to take care of me financially, but that I would always take care of it - meaning that I would always support us both, by any means necessary. I did not ask for any external rewards for my devotion; I ju..
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writing
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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208fb14
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Social science now tells us that if we can take indigent girls between the ages of 10 and 14 and give them a basic education, we can change the fabric of an entire community. If we can capture them in that fleeting window, great social advances can be achieved. Give enough young girls an education and per capita income will go up; infant mortality will go down; the rate of economic growth will increase; the rate of HIV/AIDS infection will f..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Possessing a creative mind, after all, is something like having a border collie for a pet: It needs to work, or else it will cause you an outrageous amount of trouble. Give your mind a job to do, or else it will find a job to do, and you might not like the job it invents (eating the couch, digging a hole through the living room floor, biting the mailman, etc.). It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case that if I a..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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hegira.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. <...> Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, <...> tear apart your ego a little bit, show your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you [have] to transform your life.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won't be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth--nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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0fa3b78
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People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. 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..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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fdca2ac
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What does any of that have to do with the quiet glory of merely making things, and then sharing those things with an open heart and no expectations? I
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Elizabeth Gilbert |