Book Review: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert


Hi Good day ppl !
  After ages I feel, I have completed reading a book without rushing through it. So slowly and taking my time(while travelling back from work) I have read this book, that I have given the quotes I loved from this book.
The book is:
  Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert



Its a beautiful narrative of the author's journey to find peace, happiness and herself while travelling from Italy, India and Indonesia.

After a bad divorce she travels to Italy to actually indulge herself and find satisfaction in the literal sense. To India she travels to cleanse and understand herself. Indonesia, to live a life peacefully, have gratitude for her life, Enjoy its every aspect.

This book relates to everyone. The quotes I have copy-pasted below can feel to be very Deep, but you need to read the book once to understand them thoroughly. If you have read the book, send in the quotes,incidents,comments you have.

Check Elizabeth Gilbert's website.
Most of the quotes are also available on Good Reads.

The book is interlaced with not many characters but each having a perfect role like Richard who calls Liz-Groceries
How he explains in plain language how to handle the ego while meditating:


“Ever try to take a toy away from a toddler? They don’t like that, do they? They start kicking
and screaming. Best way to take a toy away from a toddler is distract the kid, give him
something else to play with. Divert his attention. Instead of trying to forcefully take thoughts
out of your mind, give your mind something better to play with. Something healthier.”
“Like what?”
“Like love, Groceries. Like pure divine love.”


The most funniest & truthful quote by Richard:

You gotta:
You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be


Or:
Soulmate:
People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. 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. And thank God for it.

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, then introduce you to your spiritual master...”



Optimism and men :
“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.”

Broken heart:
“This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.”

Happiness:
“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. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. 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 forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”

Balanced life:
“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced life.”

Mind and control :
“You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That's the only thing you should be trying to control.”

Thoughts during meditation:
“Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water.”

Humans fight over:
“I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, 'There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love me? And Who's in charge?”

Beggars for Happiness:
“We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”

Know what you want to ask for before:
“Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can't even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I'm aiming for, how will it ever occur? Half the benefit of prayer is in the asking itself, in the offering of a clearly posed and well-considered intention. If you don't have this, all your pleas and desires are boneless, floppy, inert; they swirl at your feet in a cold fog and never lift.”

Faith:
“There's a reason we refer to "leaps of faith" - because the decision to consent to any notion of divinity is a mighty jump from the rational over to the unknowable, and I don't care how diligently scholars of every religion will try to sit you down with their stacks of books and prove to you through scripture that their faith is indeed rational; it isn't. If faith were rational, it wouldn't be - by definition - faith. Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy.”

Cure for all troubles of the world:
“There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.”

What Ketut, the medicine man said about Religion:
“I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue about God with him. Best thing to say is, 'I agree with you.' Then you go home, pray what you want. This is my idea for people to have peace about religion.”

Treasures:
“Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.”

Fail Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment:
“the six elements of her Fail Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: 'Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny.”

Some quotes which I really relate/experienced in real life:


Monkey mind: (Tell me about it :P)
“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.”

Emotions:(I actually say this in my own life)
“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”


Magnet between two people:
“One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that 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. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: "Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever --or not?”

Baby & Commitment:
“Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.”

My dream someday:

“But is it such a bad thing to live like this for just a little while? Just for a few months of one's life, is it so awful to travel through time with no greater ambition than to find the next lovely meal? Or to learn how to speak a language for no higher purpose than that it pleases your ear to hear it? Or to nap in a garden, in a patch of sunlight, in the middle of the day, right next to your favourite fountain? And then to do it again the next day?”

Travel:
“Still, despite all this, 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. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to--I just don't care.”

Prince & administrator:
“Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”

My motto: Love life to the fullest and Love yourself first !
“As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once -- that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not only in the big global Hitler-'n'-Stalin picture, but also on the smallest personal level. Even in my own life, I can see exactly where my episodes of unhappiness have brought suffering or distress or (at the very least) inconvenience to those around me. 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 all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.” 

Time: I strongly relate to this :X
“Time -- when pursued like a bandit -- will behave like one; always remaining one country or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping ou the back door of the motel just as you're banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you.” 


Hope you like the book too & can take a leaf out of it for yourself.
All the best in life !

Bye. Tc.


Comments

Meoww said…
Looks like you enjoyed the book as much as i did. My fav line was the one about prayer being talking to God and meditation listening to God. Love. Love.
Trupti said…
I really loved this quote “Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.”

I guess this will be on my reading list.
:)
Hi Nilima,
A super post after so long. the wait was worth it. I have been having this book right under my nose and have never bothered to read it.
Even now, I feel reading your blog and quotes gives me more joy. Simply loved them. It was like undergoing a course at Oneness University, actually. I thought the quote "Beggars for happiness" was the best. But those that followed only got better and better.
Thank you! Keep writing :D