Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes - Page 3

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.

True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.

In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

Once the troublesome mind "begins to compose speeches and dream up arguments, especially if these are clever, it will soon imagine it is doing important work." But if you can surpass those thoughts, Teresa explained, and ascend toward God, "it is a glorious bewilderment, a heavenly madness, in which true wisdom is acquired.

I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.

People tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend like fine weather if you're fortunate. But happiness is the result of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly.

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.

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.

The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.

... most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment.

This sadness is one of the great trials of the human experiment. 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.

Look for God, suggests my Guru. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.

God dwells within you, as you.

I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.

Before you realize this truth, say the Yogis, you will always be in despair, a notion nicely expressed in this exasperated line from the Greek stoic philosopher Epictetus: 'You bear God within you, poor wretch, and know it not.

I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what i want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.

I couldn't care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work …