The collection / 394 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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394 results · Page 12 of 17Play this collection ▷

01c. 1969 AD

I had to do something about my longing, so I got up, went to the kitchen in my nightgown, peeled a pound of potatoes, boiled them up, sliced them, fried them in butter, salted them generously and ate every bite of them - asking my body the whole while if it would please accept the satisfaction of a pound of fried potatoes in lieu of the fulfillment of lovemaking.My body replied, only after eating every bite of food: "No deal, babe.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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02c. 1969 AD

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.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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03c. 1969 AD

You know, you seem like a completely different person, now that you're with this new boyfriend. You used to look like your husband, but now you look like David. You even dress like him and talk like him. You know how some people look like their dogs? I think maybe you always look like your men.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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04c. 1969 AD

And always remember that people's judgements about you are none of your business.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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05c. 1969 AD

Admittedly, I am not the one who looks fantastic in everything, but still I cannot help loving myself.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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06c. 1969 AD

We must all get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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07c. 1969 AD

I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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08c. 1969 AD

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the "monkey mind"--the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined. This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking. Happy thoughts make me happy, but-whoop!-how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it's all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly. You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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09c. 1969 AD

The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely to fall in love.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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10c. 1969 AD

But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are locked in conflict, the whole of the world is contaminated by it.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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11c. 1969 AD

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 4 legs instead of 2. 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.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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12c. 1969 AD

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)

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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13c. 1969 AD

I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway?""Same - same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey."I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is...""Love, too," he said.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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14c. 1969 AD

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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15c. 1969 AD

This much I do know - I'm exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices and chaotic passions.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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16c. 1969 AD

Nothing is so essential as dignity. Time will reveal who has it and wi has it not." -Beatrix Whittaker

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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17c. 1969 AD

But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with think, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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18c. 1969 AD

The sentences still form in my mind, and thoughts still do their little show-off dance, but I know my thought patterns so well now that they don't bother me anymore. My thoughts have become like old neighbors, kind of bothersome but ultimately rather endearing - Mr. and Mrs. Yakkity-Yak and their three dumb children, Blah, Blah and Blah. But they don't agitate my home. There's room for all of us in this neighborhood.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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19c. 1969 AD

So this was the Ashram's final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess - only then could I become The Quiet Girl in the Back of the Temple, after all?

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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20c. 1969 AD

Only through constant focus can you become independent. Only through independence can you know yourself. And only through knowing yourself will you be able to ask the key question of your life: What is is that I am destined to accomplish, and how can I make it happen?

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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21c. 1969 AD

I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand - through rational thought - that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world as we experience it. But this is a difference of our minds, dearest one. I wish to arrive on wings, while you advance steadily on foot, magnifying glass in hand. I am a smattering wanderer, seeking God within the outer contours, searching for a new way of knowing. You stand upon the ground, and consider the evidence inch by inch. Your way is more rational and more methodical, but I cannot change my way.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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22c. 1969 AD

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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23c. 1969 AD

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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24c. 1969 AD

Most of my writing life consist of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk and I work like a farmer, and that's how it gets done.

Elizabeth Gilbert / quote

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