|
5d03aea
|
Generally speaking, though, Americans have an inability to relax into sheer pleasure. Ours is an entertainment-seeking nation, but not necessarily a pleasure-seeking one. Americans spend billions to keep themselves amused with everything from porn to theme parks to wars, but that's not exactly the same thing as quiet enjoyment. Americans work harder and longer and more stressful hours than anyone in the world today. But...we seem to like it..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
bdff10f
|
Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
ede4118
|
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.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
8a0041d
|
Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.
|
|
humor
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
8b1983d
|
I thought about the relentless thought-processing, soul-devouring machine that is my brain, and wondered how on earth I was ever going to master it. Then I remembered that line from Jaws and couldn't help smiling: 'We're gonna need a bigger boat.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
7942b8a
|
Why must everything be repeat and repeat, never finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day you must only work again. You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love goes away. You are born with nothing, you work hard, then you die with nothing. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old. - Wayan
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
d497586
|
It might have been done before, but it hasn't been done by you!
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
2b6f465
|
Astonishingly, at some point, a sputtering torch was thrust into her hands. Alma did not see who gave it to her. She had never before been entrusted with fire. The torch spit sparks and sent chunks of flaming tar spinning into the air behind her as she bolted across the cosmos-the only body in the heavens who was not held to a strict elliptical path. Nobody stopped her. She was a comet. She did not know that she was not flying.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
30807b5
|
This is what intimacy does to us over time. That's what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other's stories. (p.237)
|
|
stories
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
93e3da8
|
Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it. Your problem is, you just can't let this one go. It's over, Groceries. David's purpose was to shake you up, drive you out of that marriage that you needed to leave, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light could get in, make you so desperate and o..
|
|
let-go
soulmates
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
d6bf190
|
In all our lives, there are days that we wish we could see expunged from the record of our very existence. Perhaps we long for that erasure because a particular day brought us such splintering sorrow that we can scarcely bear to think of it ever again. Or we might wish to blot out an episode forever because we behaved so poorly on that day - we were mortifyingly selfish, or foolish to an extraordinary degree. Or perhaps we injured another p..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
7e6da8e
|
Here was something I already knew to be true about myself: Just as there are some wives who will occasionally need a break from their husbands in order to visit a spa for the weekend with their girlfriends, I will always be the sort of wife who occasionally needs a break from her husband in order to visit Cambodia. Just for a few days!
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
410963c
|
He looks at you like you're someone he's never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You're a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
7e14155
|
The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.
|
|
transformation
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
560974a
|
I live in nature where everything is connected, circular. The seasons are circular. The planet is circular, and so is the planet around the sun. The course of water over the earth is circular coming down from the sky and circulating through the world to spread life and then evaporating up again. I live in a circular teepee and build my fire in a circle. The life cycles of plants and animals are circular. I live outside where I can see this...
|
|
inspirational
life
nature
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
98f78d1
|
So that's it. You have now reached infatuation's fial destination - the complete and merciless devaluation of self.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
4811fab
|
Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over... himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He's going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
9e72622
|
So whenever that brittle voice of dissatisfaction emerges within me, I can say "Ah, my ego! There you are, old friend!" It's the same thing when I'm being criticized and I notice myself reaching with outrage, heartache, or defensiveness. It's just my ego, flaring up and testing its power. In such circumstances, I have learned to watch my heated emotions carefully, but I try not to take them too seriously, because I know that it's merely my ..
|
|
defensiveness
ego
soul
wonder
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
9810f2a
|
Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.
|
|
man
truth
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
9d8aa6b
|
I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don't know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do...
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
f61ce4d
|
What would I do if you never came here?' But I was ALWAYS coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
41a1ec0
|
This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. This was what my voice would sound like if I'd only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine?
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
5a685c4
|
We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. We wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. We have failed to recognize our deeper divine character.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
e2ec668
|
You don't need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
1d39d0e
|
Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you'll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I'm about to do anything interesting--and, may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means, keep doing your job, if you feel you must. Bu..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
1c198f4
|
Mostly you meet friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on the train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
58be31a
|
Kalos Kai Agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
4817156
|
Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
cab16f8
|
Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
a79b43a
|
All transformation appears to be motivated by desperation and emergency.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
41518d7
|
I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.
|
|
marriage
truth
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
1f865c0
|
Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?" I asked my medicine man the next day...So what can we do about the craziness of the world?" Nothing." Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. "This is nature of world. This is destiny. Worry about your craziness only-make you in peace."
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
10e1bf7
|
It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
29cb6fd
|
It is merely this world that is chaotic, bringing changes to us all that nobody could have anticipated.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
7699056
|
Who will ever kiss this encyclopedia of a head?
|
|
knowledge-education
love
love-hurts
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
ccca78f
|
If something is rubbing so hard against you, you can be sure it's working on you.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
841da41
|
Well, child, you may do whatever you like with your suffering," Hanneke said mildly. "It belongs to you. But I shall tell you what I do with mine. I grasp it by the small hairs, I cast it to the ground, and I grind it under the heel of my boot. I suggest you learn to do the same."
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
12d72ce
|
But why must everything 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?
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
50c98a3
|
Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me
|
|
gay-marriage
gay-rights
homosexual
humor
marriage
matrimony
same-sex-marriage
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
5ddb1ed
|
True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
f7b8efa
|
The sweetness of doing nothing.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
da38fe6
|
A good-enough novel violently written now is better than a perfect novel meticulously written never.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
bb1769b
|
David was catnip and kryptonite to me.
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |
|
f70aa5f
|
So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru's roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing -- a spontaneous handstand--isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy o..
|
|
|
Elizabeth Gilbert |