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The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
Beauty
Natural
War
Legacies
World
Legacy
Visible
Variety
Endless
Merely

More quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert

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As far as we know, we are the only species on the planet who have been given the gift-or curse, perhaps-of awareness about our own mortality. Everything here eventually dies we're just the lucky ones who get to think about this fact every day.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Your fear is the most boring thing about you.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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We all want things to stay the same. Settle for living in misery because we are afraid of change, of things crumbling to ruins. Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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One of these poems I wrote after having been here only a month. The other, I wrote this morning. In the space between the two poems, I have found acres of grace
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I said, It seems like you have fond feelings toward your ex-wife. Are you two still close? Nah, he said casually. She thinks I changed my name to Motherfucker.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I'm trying to dismantle a stereotype that in order to live any kind of creative life, you have to be in torment and suffering. We're addicted to this idea because it makes for good bio pics... but I actually think it's better to live a life where you're constantly exploring your curiosity and creativity.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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A lot of [erotica] was really interestingly disguised in the 19th-century as medical journals. So it would be in the voice of a learned doctor talking about somebody's pathologies. And then it would get really detailed. And then it would get really sweaty. And then you're like, This isn't a doctor! I would like to see a degree, Mister!
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Just having walked into a prison environment, sat there for two hours, the effect that it had on me. ... I couldn't imagine the effect it would have on a person 24 hours a day. So then I became more intrigued, and we began a correspondence, and I began visiting [Todd Willingham].
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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
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I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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The sound universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there's a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of night the dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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That's your friend. My husband is my best friend. He's not the mirror that holds up my flaws. He's just the guy who's like, 'I think you're terrific'... It's just simple, showing up for each other.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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We invented marriage. Couples invented marriage. We also invented divorce,mind you. And we invented infidelity,too, as well as romantic misery. In fact we invented the whole sloppy mess of love and intimacy and aversion and euphoria and failure. But most importantly of all, most subversively of all, most stubbornly of all, we invented privacy.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.
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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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