NOTES FROM EAT, PRAY, LOVE
Compilation of lovable quotes from one of my most favorite memoirs of all time :)
- "People think a soul mate is your perfect fit. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.
A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then they leave."
From Richard
- “Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the ‘monkey mind’– the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit, and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.”
From Liz
- Universally, people tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend upon you like the fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. But that’s not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of a personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it.
Liz
- And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness for ever to stay afloat on top of it. If you don’t, you will leak away your innate contentment.
Liz
- All the sorrow and trouble in this world is caused by unhappy people. The search for contentment is therefore not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else.
Liz; in her unrelenting quest towards balance
- MEN. The agitation gets more jagged, at the thought of the word, turning into a more panic assailment. I don’t know how to do this anymore; I used to be the biggest, boldest and most shameless of flirts when I was in my teens and twenties. I seem to remember that it was once fun, meeting some guy, spooling him in toward me, spooning out the veiled invitations and provocations, casting all caution aside and letting the consequences spill how they will.
Liz; Emotions in meeting new men, after a nasty divorce
- 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 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 then I have hung on to a relationship for a long time waiting for a man to ascend to his own greatness. I have been a victim of my own optimism.
Liz – in falling in love after a broken heart
- I have never been loved and adored like this before by anyone, never with such pleasure and single-minded concentration. Never have I been so unpeeled, revealed, unfurled, and hurled through the event of love making.
Liz – On falling and making love during confusion
- One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people and these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else’s body is not a decision you can make. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn’t there, you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient’s body to accept a kidney from a wrong donor.
Liz – On compatibility and intimacy
- Zen Buddhists believe that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is an acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into the tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is another force operating here as well. The future tree itself; which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution of nothingness into maturity.
- In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back all the people who sustain our lives. Maybe it’s wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and just to keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.
Liz – on account after her journey
-"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight. "
From Liz
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