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Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Anyone
Free
Clearing
Enjoy
Obstacle
Else
Obstacles
Way
Cease
People
Misery
Serve
Gets

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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I completely respect the ways people are bound in the lives that they have, whether it's because of forces outside of their control or choices that they've made that they want to honor with their own responsibilities and obligations - taking care of people around them or being a part of a community, or their work.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I can see how the authorities could not like Todd [ Willingham], because he's not a person who is going to give you respect if you don't deserve it just because you say something.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Your tears are my prayers.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be 'the happiest moment' of one's life.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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My mom is a master gardener and I grew up on a farm. I came back to it really late in life and discovered that despite how lazy and inattentive I was as a child, I had managed to accidentally learn quite a bit about gardening.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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If you're going to answer the call and you're going to transform and you're going to change, get ready. It is not a day at the beach.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I still can’t say whether I ever want children….I can only say how I feel now--grateful to be on my own. I also know that I won’t go forth and have children just in case I might regret missing it later in life I don’t think this is a strong enough motivation to bring more babies onto the earth.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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When I read the article [in The New Yorker] by David Grann, I was very struck by people responding to the article, of people thinking I was such a hero and what a wonderful person I was, and I didn't feel that at all. I felt like I had very much, like Todd [Willingham], taken a path of self-preservation.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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 by 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.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Indeed, when I came to Italy, I expected to encounter a certain amount of resentment, but have received instead empathy from most Italians. In any reference to George Bush, people only nod to Berlusconi, saying,We understand how it is - we have one, too.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Being a woman did not look enviable to me, even when it looked admirable. It looked like nonstop sacrifice and service. Because it was. Being a woman seemed vulnerable and sad. Even the strong women I knew - and they were all strong - had earned their strength through enduring huge disappointments and tremendous struggles.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Maybe it's just me but I would suspect that a man trying to impress a woman would be more likely to bring out the steak - I killed this for you, now I'm grilling it for you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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What Richard is talking about is instead admitting to the existence of negative thoughts, understanding where they came from and why they arrived, and then - with great forgiveness and fortitude - dismissing them.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, I honor the divinity that resides within me.
Elizabeth Gilbert