"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 is 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 leave.

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..."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"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."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"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."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us,...The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's difficulty in coming to viruous balance with himself. "
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"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."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"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."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship - just so long as those prayers are sincere."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

"If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame."
— Oscar Wilde

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability."
— Oscar Wilde

"All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does, and that is his."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power."
— Oscar Wilde

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
— Oscar Wilde

"To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)

"Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months."
— Oscar Wilde

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
— Oscar Wilde

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing."
— Oscar Wilde (The Soul of Man Under Socialism and Selected Critical Prose)

"The only good thing to do with good advice is pass it on; it is never of any use to oneself."
— Oscar Wilde