Quote

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.

Elizabeth Gilbert

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Elizabeth Gilbert
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: July 18
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
Waterbury
Connecticut
World
Anyone
Cathartic
Upon
Bestow
Individual
Automatically
Experience
Participation
Doe
Showing
Ever
Growth
Without
Willing
Life
Wisdom

More quotes by 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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I feel like all this stuff that we make: books and art and music, all of it. There's this energy that circles the world that wants to be made manifest, and it is just looking for someone to come through. And it's dying for you to make it. And if you don't do it, it will go find somebody else.
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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Let me ask you something, in all the years that you have undressed in front of a gentleman has he ever asked you to leave? Has he ever walked out and left? No? It’s because he doesn’t care! He’s in a room with a naked girl, he just won the lottery
Elizabeth Gilbert
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With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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I'm afraid many women do choose the wedding over the marriage. It seems a steep price to pay, but it comes from a place of deep, sad longing to be loved and to have it proven that you are of value.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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He endeared himself to me forever the first night we met, when I was getting frustrated with my inability to find the words I wanted in Italian, and he put his hand on my arm and said, Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.
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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What worked yesterday doesn't always work today.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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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Reality has taught us that no woman can build an honest life without sacrificing something along the way. Deciding what will be sacrificed is not easy.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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What are you willing to give up, in order to become who you really need to be?
Elizabeth Gilbert
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Creativity is a scavenger hunt. It's your obligation to pay attention to clues, to the thing that gives you that little tweak.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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
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Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.
Elizabeth Gilbert
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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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I used to say, 'Man, I think I'd be a really good dad. I'll be a great provider. I'm funny I'll go on trips with them - I'll do all sorts of stuff.' But the momming? I'm not made for that. I have a really good mom I know what she put into it.
Elizabeth Gilbert