I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I'd been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion...well, surely there was a way to learn that trick.
Elizabeth GilbertI don't think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.
Elizabeth GilbertThe resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.
Elizabeth GilbertThis 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 GilbertThe whole sphere of air that surrounds us, Alma, is alive with invisible attractions โ electric, magnetic, fiery and thoughtful. There is a universal sympathy all around usโฆ When we cease all argument and debate โ both internal and external โ our true questions can be heard and answeredโฆThat is the gathering of magic.
Elizabeth GilbertA 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, then introduce you to your spiritual master.
Elizabeth Gilbert