“Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert - Quodid

My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy? To still have a broken heart almost two years after a love story ends?

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love time heart hurt heartbreak

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

life happiness boredom contentment

People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you are fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

happiness effort luck travel weather fortune

I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love optimism relationship risk romance greatness men

We were already separated, that was official, but there was still a window of hope left open that perhaps someday we could give things another try.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

hope relationships seperation

Traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless, newborn baby―I just don't care what it puts me through.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love life sacrifice travel

Find somebody new to love someday. Take the time you need to heal, but don't forget to eventually share your heart with someone.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love heart sharing healing

My hypersensitive awareness of time's speed led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace. If I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

awareness time experience speed maximizing

Why must everything be repeat and repeat, never finish, never resting? You work so hard one day, but the next day you must only work again. You eat, but the next day, you are already hungry. You find love, then love goes away. You are born with nothing, you work hard, then you die with nothing. You are young, then you are old. No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

You should never give yourself the chance to fall apart because, when you do, it becomes a tendency and it happens over and over again. You must practice being strong instead.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

strength falling apart

Big deal. So you fell in love with someone. Don't you see what happened? This guy touched a place in your heart deeper than you thought you were capable of reaching, I mean, you got zapped. But that love you felt, that's just the beginning. You just got a taste of love. That's just limited little rinky-dink mortal love. Wait till you see how much more deeply you can love than that.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love heart vulnerability

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.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn't it?

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

love inevitability ever after

There's a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, "Let me take care of you forever," and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I'd given up looking for that person, learned how to say this heartening sentence to myself, especially in times of fear.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

You must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

learning self-love politeness

Don't apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

humanity crying emotion robots

I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

loneliness exhaustion depression bravery

We are not what the other one needs, still he is certain that I will find great love in my life someday.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

I'm considered a difficult girl. I have a reputation for needing to be told a good reason to do something before I will do it.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it.

—Elizabeth Gilbert in Love

About Elizabeth Gilbert

Picture of Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert (born July 18, 1969) is an American journalist and author. Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, has sold over 12 million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. The book was also made into a film of the same name in 2010.

[from Wikipedia]

See more quotations from Elizabeth Gilbert on Quodid