“It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“The more unsettled and unbalanced we feel, the more quickly and recklessly we are likely to fall in love.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“In the end, it seems to me that forgiveness may be the only realistic antidote we are offered in love, to combat the inescapable disappointments of intimacy.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Desiring another person is perhaps the most risky endeavor of all. As soon as you want somebody—really want him—it is as though you have taken a surgical needle and sutured your happiness to the skin of that person, so that any separation will now cause a lacerating injury.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully, to love them almost despite themselves.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Then again, you cannot stop the flood of desire as it moves through the world, inappropriate though it may sometimes be. It is the prerogative of all humans to make ludicrous choices, to fall in love with the most unlikely of partners, and to set themselves up for the most predictable of calamities.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“People always fall in love with the most perfect aspects of each other’s personalities. Who wouldn’t? Anybody can love the most wonderful parts of another person. But that’s not the clever trick. The really clever trick is this: Can you accept the flaws? Can you look at your partner’s faults honestl…”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“For if there is one thing I have learned over the years about men, it is that feelings of powerlessness do not usually bring forth their finest qualities.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Real, sane, mature love—the kind that pays the mortgage year after year and picks up the kids after school—is not based on infatuation but on affection and respect.’”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.”— Elizabeth Gilbert, amazon.com
“Let people feel the weight of who you really are, and let them fucking deal with it.”— Tarryn Fisher, amazon.com
“When people resolve themselves to something, it becomes very difficult to feel anything but that resolve.”— Tarryn Fisher, amazon.com
“When you present your needs and boundaries like this, the right man will realize he’d be a fool to lose you. The right man will step up to the plate and ASK YOU for the commitment you’re after…and he’ll swell up thinking it was his idea all along and that he’s ‘won’ you.”— Christian Carter, eharmony.com
“Men are simply not attracted to women who try and convince them to be in a more serious relationship with them. Instead, men are deeply and naturally attracted to women who live their lives and have certain ‘standards’ when it comes to interacting with men. And one of the unspoken standards that is…”— Christian Carter, eharmony.com
“Commitment matters. And commitment to the marriage doesn’t just mean saying, ‘I’m staying ’til death do us part—even if I have to make everyone miserable in the process.’ It means saying, ‘I commit, every day, to make this marriage the best it can be.’ Commitment is an active, daily decision, not a…”— Sheila Wray Gregoire, amazon.com