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Perfectionism is a particularly evil lure for women, who, I believe, hold themselves to an even higher standard of performance than do men. There are many reasons why women's voices and visions are not more widely represented today in creative fields. Some of that exclusion is due to regular old misogyny, but it's also true that--all too often--women are the ones holding themselves back from participating in the first place. Holding back th..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Man, they got mosquitoes 'round this place big enough to rape a chicken.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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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 you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of ..
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happiness
blessings
contentment
pray
soul
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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777b7ae
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But to yell at your creativity, saying, "You must earn money for me!" is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you're talking about, and all you're doing is scaring it away, because you're making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Well, I always tried to look nice and be feminine even in the worst tragedies and crisis, there's no reason to add to everyone's misery by looking miserable yourself. That's my philosophy. This is why I always wore makeup and jewelry into the jungle-nothing too extravagant, but maybe just a nice gold bracelet and some earrings, a little lipstick, good perfume. Just enough to show that I still had my self-respect.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Il bel far niente.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Because I know something that you don't know. I know that this is the worst experience of your life, but I also know that someday you'll move past it and you'll be fine. And helping somebody likej you through the worst experience of her life is incredibly gratifying.
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gratifying
worst-moment-know
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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fb8190b
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The search for God is a reversal of the normal, mundane worldly order. In search for God, you revert from what attracts you and swim toward that which is difficult. You abandon your comforting and familiar habits with the hope (the mere hope!) that something greater will be offered you in return for what you have given up.. if we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our sou..
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elizabeth gilbert |
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What do you love doing so much that the words failure and success essentially become irrelevant?
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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You love new boyfriend?" "I think so. Yes." "Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Well, just remember--all your misery will be waiting for you at the door upon your exit, should you care to pick it up again when you leave.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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You may return here once you have fully come to understand that you are always here.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Yoga is the effort to experience one's divinity personally and then to hold on to that experience forever.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair.
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funny
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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0d84296
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I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker," he continued, as though he had not heard her. "We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants u..
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universe
religion
science
god
intelligence
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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730f9c1
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My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the planet--that's not a problem. The problem is that I just can't live anywhere on the planet.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly ..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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We gallop through our lives like circus performers balancing on two speeding side-by-side horses--one foot is on the horse called "fate," the other on the horse called "free will." And the question you have to ask every day is--which horse is which? Which horse do I need to stop worrying about because it's not under my control, and which do I need to steer with concentrated effort?"
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free-will
life
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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db26c53
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Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors..
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life
love
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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11c034b
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How much do you love me?' and "Who's in charge?" ....these two questions of LOVE and CONTROL undo us ALL, trip us up and cause war, grief, and suffering. People follow different paths, straight or crooked, according to their temperament, depending on which they consider best, or most appropriate -- and all reach You, just as rivers enter the ocean."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Where did you get the idea you aren't allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You're a constituent--you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So, put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me--it will at least be taken into consideration.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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She said: "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 yo..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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God isn't interested in watching you enact some performance of personality in order to comply with some crackpot notion you have about how a spiritual person looks or behaves. We all seem to get this idea that, in order to be sacred, we have to make some massive, dramatic change of character, that we have to renounce our individuality.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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The old cobbler had believed in something he called "the signature of all things"-namely, that God had hidden clues for humanity's betterment inside the design of every flower, leaf, fruit, and tree on earth. All the natural world was a divine code, Boehme claimed, containing proof of our Creator's love."
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Traveling is the great true love of my life... I am loyal and constant in my love of travel. 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.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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You have now reached infatuation's final destination--the complete and merciless devaluation of self.
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infatuation
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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3a4f121
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Religion is for those who don't want to go to hell, and spirituality is for those who have already been there.
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spirituality
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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This is very American, too - the insecurity about whether we have earned our happiness. Planet Advertising in America orbits completely around the need to convince the uncertain consumer that yes, you have actually warranted a special treat. This Bud's for You! You Deserve a Break Today! Because You're Worth It! You've Come a Long Way, Baby! And the insecure consumer thinks, Yeah! Thanks! I AM gonna go buy a six-pack, damn it! Maybe even tw..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Attraversiamo (meaning "Lets cross over" in Italian)"
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Argue for your limitations and you get to keep them.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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meditation vs prayer = listening vs talking
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religious
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for giant squid, I cannot have a baby.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Nothing is so essential as dignity...Time will reveal who has it and who has it not.
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life-and-living
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Creativity is sacred, and it is not sacred. What we make matters enormously, and it doesn't matter at all. We toil alone, and we are accompanied by spirits. We are terrified, and we are brave. Art is a crushing chore and a wonderful privilege. Only when we are at our most playful can divinity finally get serious with us. Make space for all these paradoxes to be equally true inside your soul, and I promise--you can make anything. So please c..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.
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intimacy
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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6e0a6fe
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Sometimes out hearts are broken so new light can get in.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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b50a6be
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Own your disappointment, acknowledge it for what it is, and move on.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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3bbb867
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If you're alive, you're a creative person.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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I do not need to love you to prove that I love myself!!
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love
movie-quote
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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ed1e051
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I do forget sometimes how much it means for certain men--for certain people--to be able to provide their loved ones with material comforts and protection at all times. I forget how dangerously reduced some men can feel when that basic ability has been stripped from them. I forget how much that matters to men, what it represents.
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providers
powerlessness
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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a54b4f2
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So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.
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Elizabeth Gilbert |
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In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy." "Women's sense of integrity seems to be entwined with an ethic of care, so that to see themselves as women as to see themselves in a relationship of connection...I believe that many modern women, my mother included, carry within them a whole secret New England cemetery, wherein that h..
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Elizabeth Gilbert |