top of page
.png){kind=small}
"Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing'... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either."
Standard
Customized
!["Il bel far niente means 'the beauty of doing nothing'... [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life's achievement. You don't necessarily need to be rich in order to experience this, either."](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAICRAEAOw==)
Exlpore more Lifestyle quotes
"Susannah continued. 'If and when I go off slow dancing in the ever after, I don't want to look like I've been stuck in a hospital room my whole life. I at least want to be tan."
"Old wood best to burn old wine to drink old friends to trust and old authors to read."
"I started off for home, where I planned to recruit a good book and hide away from the world."
"This is the fast lane, folks...and some of us like it here."
"If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways to do this would be to enjoy her free time."
"She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds."
"He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in other people… I got the feeling that Julián was living in the past, locked in his memories. Julián lived within himself, for his books and inside them—a comfortable prison of his own design."
"You say this as if you envied him."
"There are worse prisons than words."
Explore more quotes by Elizabeth Gilbert
"Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family's history."
"It has taken me years to learn this, but it does seem to be the case if that I am not actively creating something, then I am probably actively destroying something."
"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."
"He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.... You can still live on that shimmering line between your old thinking and your new understanding, always in a state of learning. In the figurative sense, this is a border that is always moving-- as you advance forward in your studies and realizations, that mysterious forest of the unknown always stays a few feet ahead of you, so you have to travel light in order to keep following it. You have to stay mobile, movable, supple."
"What is it about the American obsession with productivity and responsibility that makes it so difficult for us to allow ourselves a little time to solve the puzzle of our own lives, before it's too late?"
"Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people it's also a political and economic contract of the highest order."
"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."
"You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions."
"But I was always coming here. I though 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."
bottom of page