Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

In those days, I still thoroughly enjoyed the romance I called "by myself"; I didn't know yet how it gets lonely, picks up a sharp edge later on that ruins a day now and then-- ruins more than that, if you're not careful.

But in the end, in the end one is alone. We are all of us alone. I mean I'm told these days we have to consider ourselves as being in society... but in the end one knows one is alone, that one lives at the heart of a solitude.

Emotion is a broad spectrum and I just been to a lot of sides of my own emotions.

I was quite a different child, I felt isolated. In time, that level of being with yourself crystallises who you are, and you can see what other people are without being blinded by what they want from you.

If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.

Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

I think over time you learn to know a bit more about yourself - you develop a certain amount of self-insight and self-awareness, and you know what you can absorb, and what you cannot; what gets to you and what doesn't.

And so I learned what solitude really was. It was raw material - awesome, malleable,older than men or worlds or water. And it was merciless - for it let a man become precisely what he alone made of himself.

But when you're alone in the world, really alone, you have no choice but to be open to suggestions.

Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

I've had to realize I need to distance myself a bit from relying on the feedback. I think it's wonderful but can also be poison. You don't want to buy into it too much.

Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant.

I think that all of the scars and all of the layers that I've built over the years made me the person that I am today, and I'm pretty happy about that person.

Solitude cherishes great virtues and destroys little ones.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

So it is necessary that we should learn to be alone.

One of the things that is devastating is I realise I haven't been living a different life than when I was, like, 12. I'm shocked at how reclusive I've been since then. I was unaware of it until recently.

The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.

It's important for people to figure out their own lives before involving someone else - to gauge where you are and work on your own issues.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Friends are like windows through which you see out into the world and back into yourself. If you don't have friends you see much less than you otherwise might.

I write about moments, and I don't make blanket statements about anything because no one has all the answers; nobody's come up with a foolproof way to do anything when it comes to emotions.

I lived a very isolated life. When you start at 20, you have a lot of nonsense to work out of your system.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.