I just started re-reading Eat, Pray, Love for the third time. I initially resisted the book (like a smug hipster) because I’d heard a bunch of stories about bored housewives who read it and then promptly jumped on planes to Bali, seeking enlightenment at the bottom of a cocktail or in the pants of a handsome stranger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that… but I was skeptical.
Highly skeptical.
But then I read it and I loved it, just like the millions of other people who’d read it before me. Which, let me tell you, was a blow to my ego because clearly I’d been a presumptuous wench and Elizabeth Gilbert put me in my place.
Also, I should mention, Elizabeth Gilbert is the particular brand of Whimsical-Neurotic that I enjoy but if you’re not of the same opinion, bear with me.
So, for your pleasure, here are some quotes from Eat, Pray, Love that I find comforting and inspiring:
“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within it, no matter how slight.”
“You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.”
“That’s the thing about a human life – there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”
“I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not coming here. This was never not going to happen.”
“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.”
