Quote

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
People
Misery
Serve
Gets
Anyone
Free
Clearing
Enjoy
Obstacle
Else
Obstacles
Way
Cease

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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You have to work ceaselessly on your end to digest and imbibe your opportunities or, I have come to believe, they will gradually slip away and knock on someone else's more receptive door.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The resting place of the mind is the heart.
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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The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.
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The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.
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In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe resting place for our most complicated feelings of joy or trauma, so that we don't have to haul those feelings around with us forever, weighing us down.
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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I will not harbor unhealthy thoughts anymore.
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There's nothing special about your fear.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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You might get nothing out of it at all except a beautiful, long life where all you did was follow your gorgeous curiosity. And that should be enough too.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Absolute certainty is not something I strive for anymore. I've learned the hard way that destiny usually looks upon our most strident convictions with amusement, or perhaps even pity.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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My whole life I've been an over-giver. My general operating policy has always been, 'If it belongs to me, don't worry: You can have it!'
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Every few years, I think, 'Maybe now I'm finally smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand 'Ulysses.'' So I pick it up and try it again. And by page 10, as always, I'm like, 'What the hell?'
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I am a better person when I have less on my plate.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Take me someplace where we can be silent together.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The nineteenth century was the last moment in history when a relatively educated layperson could follow what was going on in the world of science and invention to a wide degree. Also, there were no professionals. This was a time when amateur explorers, naturalists and enthusiasts were are still making major contributions to progress.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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There is a theory that if you yearn sincerely enough for a Guru, you will find one. The universe will shift, destiny's molecules will get themselves organized and your path will soon intersect with the path of the master you need.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I can honestly say [that writing] is the best life there is, because you get to live within the realm of your own mind, and that is a profoundly rare human privilege.
Elizabeth Gilbert