The collection / 394 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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394 results · Page 11 of 17Play this collection ▷

01c. 1969 AD

This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it - I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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02c. 1969 AD

Step forward out of your own lingering residual sense of smallness, take up every inch of life that is your blessed inheritance, and DO YOUR THING.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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03c. 1969 AD

Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be. It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predicatable of calamities.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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04c. 1969 AD

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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05c. 1969 AD

I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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06c. 1969 AD

You learn to smile even in you liver?''Even in my lire, Ketut. Big smile in my liver.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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07c. 1969 AD

I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work — one that is just about respectfully showing up for your vocation day after day, steadily doing your best, and letting go of the results. Not going to war against anyone else, or against their talents, or against themselves.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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08c. 1969 AD

When Catherine told me about this (tragedy nearby), I could only say, shocked, "Dear God, that family needs grace."She replied firmly, "That family needs casseroles," and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this _is_ grace.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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09c. 1969 AD

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?

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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10c. 1969 AD

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under my jurisdiction. There are certain lottery tickets I can buy, thereby increasing my odds of finding contentment. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my body and life and money and energy with. I can select what I eat and read and study. i can choose how I'm going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life - whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can't rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, because I'm feeling too damn sorry for myself, I can choose to keep trying to change my outlook). I can choose my words and the tone of voice in which I speak to others. And most of all, I can choose my thoughts.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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11c. 1969 AD

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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12c. 1969 AD

I wanted to call a time out, to demand that everybody just STOP until I could understand everything.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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13c. 1969 AD

Then I give her a grim shake of my head and say aloud, 'This blows ass.' She nods sympathetically. She doesn't understand, but of course, in her way she understands completely.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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14c. 1969 AD

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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15c. 1969 AD

In return, Giovanni told me that empathizing Italians say L'ho provato sulla mia pelle, which means 'I have experienced that on my own skin.' Meaning, I have also been burned or scarred in this way, and I know exactly what you're going through.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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16c. 1969 AD

Humor is hard to catch in a second language. Especially when you're as serious a young man as Giovanni. He said to me the other night, 'When you are ironic, I am always behind you. I am slower. It is like you are the lightning and I am the thunder.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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17c. 1969 AD

Well... "why" is a hard question to answer in any language.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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18c. 1969 AD

Liz: What's it like in hell?Ketut: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down -- all same, at end.Liz: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?Ketut: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.Liz: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell -- same destinations -- are the same thing anyway?Ketut: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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19c. 1969 AD

We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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20c. 1969 AD

I am openly prideful, secretly judgemental, and cowardly in conflict.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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21c. 1969 AD

writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an "urban Thoreau") set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of "work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume...

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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22c. 1969 AD

Groceries, you need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select what clothes you're gonna wear every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control. Drop everything else but that. Because if you can't learn to master your thinking, you're in deep trouble forever.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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23c. 1969 AD

I am a better person when I have less on my plate.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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24c. 1969 AD

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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