Elizabeth Gilbert |
At some point [...], you gotta let go, and sit still, and allow contentment to come to you.
Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody - really want him - it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause you a lacerating injury.
You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.
Destiny, I feel, is also a relationship - a play between divine grace and willful self-effort.
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.
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.
I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, "There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who`s in charge?"
We don`t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self who is eternally at peace.
When you`re lost in those woods, it sometimes takes you a while to realize that you are lost. For the longest time, you can convince yourself that you`ve just wandered a few feet off the path, that you`ll find your way back to the trailhead any moment now. Then night falls again and again, and you still have no idea where you are, and its time to admit that you have bewildered yourself so far off the path that you dont even know from which direction the sun rises anymore.
Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can`t even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I`m aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don`t have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.
Someday you`re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You`ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing...
You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.
I`m here. I love you. I don`t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. [...] There`s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you.