Paulo Coelho Quotations | Page 5

I don't go to parties in general.

Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

If there hadn't been a sixth day, man would not exist; copper would always be copper; and lead just lead. It's true that everything has its Personal Legend, but one day that Personal Legend will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new Personal Legend, until, someday, the Soul of the World becomes one thing only.

If you're a nobody, if your work has no impact, then it deserves to be praised. If, however, you climb out of that state of mediocrity and are a success, then your defying 'the law' and deserve to be punished.

Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force.

But love is much like a dam; if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current.

God only rarely reveals the future. When he does so, it is for one reason: it's a future that was written so as to be altered.

He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have.

Everyday God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.

And I began to feel sorry for myself; for so many years, my drawer full of memories had held the same old stories.

You say they create their own reality," said Veronika, "but what is reality?

I was trying to come round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality capable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was because of a love I didn't want to believe I felt but which was continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating way. I was content in my universe and didn't want to change it at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction.

If one day I could get out of here, I would allow myself to be crazy. Everyone is indeed crazy, but the craziest are the ones who don't know they're crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.

Don't think about what you've left behind" The alchemist said to the boy as they began to ride across the sands of the desert. "If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.

she wanted to dance with someone who would embrace her in the way she dreamed of since adolescence.

Time that never ends, that never passes, that remains in the present, where all of life's secrets lie.

Not even your love could withhold you from fulfilling your own personal legend.

Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by.

He knew one of the women well, and had shared his universe with her. They had seen the same mountains, and the same trees, although each of them had seem them differently. She knew his weaknesses, his moments of hatred, of despair. Yet she was there at his side. They shared the same universe.

But he was wrong. Because I had fought with my heart and defeated it long ago. I was certainly not going to become passionate about something that was impossible. I knew my limits; I knew how much suffering i could bear.

Yes, my mind was wandering. I wished I were there with someone who could bring peace to my heart someone with whom I could spend a little time without being afraid that i would lose him the next day. With that reassurance, the time would pass more slowly. We could be silent for a while because we'd know we had the rest of our lives together for conversation. I wouldn't have to worry about serious matters, about difficult decisions and hard words.

What good is money to you if you're going to die? It's not often that money can save someone's life.

A Warrior of Light never resorts to trickery, but he knows how to distract his opponent.

He has done things that caused me to doubt His wisdom, but never His existence.

It was shepherds who were the first to recognize a king that the rest of the world refused to acknowledge.

At that moment, it seemed to him that time stood still, and the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke—the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert. Something that exerted the same force whenever two pairs of eyes met, as had theirs here at the well.

To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation.

It's not what enters men's mouth that is evil," said the alchemist. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.

There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.

Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found.

We tend to seek captivity because we are used to seeing freedom as something that has neither frontiers nor responsibilities.

Defeat exists but not suffering. A true warrior knows that when he loses a battle, he is improving the skill with which he wields a sword. He will be able to fight more skilfullly next time.

Dreams nourish the soul just as food nourishes the body. The pleasure of the search and of adventure feeds our dreams.

All things are manifestations of one thing only.

There is always a gap between intention and action..

In adolescence she thought it was too early to choose, now in youth she was convinced it was too late to change.

Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they're not. When two bodies meet, it is just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or--such is the pleasure they experience--they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.

to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world.

Every second of the search is an encounter with God. When I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous...I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve.

Only a man who is happy can create happiness in others.

There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.

If the whole world is evil, then the tragedy that befell you is justified," she went on. "That would make it easier for you to accept the deaths of your wife and daughters. But if good people do exist, then, however much you deny it, your life will be unbearable; because fate set a trap for you, and you know you didn't deserve it. It isn't the light you want to recover, it's the certainty that there is only darkness.

And one more thing: you still believe that man can be good. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't have invented all this nonsense to convince yourself otherwise.

but something always went wrong, and the relationship would end precisely at the moment when she was sure that this was the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. After a long time, she came to the conclusion that men brought only pain, frustration, suffering and a sense of time dragging.

We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take.

Everyone when they are young knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.

In the long run what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own destinies.

The world has a soul and whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of many things.

I'm alive. When I'm eating that's all I think about. If I'm on the march, I just concentrate on marching. If I have to fight,it will be just as good a day as any to die. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man. Life is the moment we are living now.

First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us accoring to His well

They think they're normal, because they all do the same thing. Well, I'm going to pretend that I have drunk from the same well as them.

Personal growth has its price, and she was paying it without complaint.

As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually FELT them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave.

That is why embittered people find heroes and madmen a perennial source of fascination, for they have no fear of life or death. Both heroes and madmen are indifferent to danger and will forge ahead regardless of what other people say.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure.

She regretted having taken his hand, she wanted to get away from there as soon as possible, to hide her shame, never again to see that man who had witnessed all that was most sordid in her, and who nevertheless continued to treat her with such tenderness. But again she remembered Mari's words: She didn't need to explain her life to anyone, not even to the young man standing before her.

They went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers.

You have understood what all great painters understand: in order to forget the rules, you must know them and respect them.

And the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us.

In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself.

Over-anxiety ultimately banishes every trace of joy from life.

Join with those who sing, tell stories, talk pleasure in life, and have joy in their eyes, because joy is contagious, and can prevent others from becoming paralysed by depression, loneliness and difficulties.

Pain, loss and separation are inevitable on the path of love, and the only way of avoiding them is by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you have to renounce love.It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.

music isn't just something that comforts or distracts us, it goes beyond that - it's an ideology. you can judge people by the kind of music they listen to.

Sometimes there's just no way to hold back the river.

Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.

The Lord heareth the prayers of those who ask to put aside hatred. But he is deaf to those who would flee from love.

This was freedom; to feel what the heart desired with no thought to the opinion of the rest... She was free, for love liberates.

Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.

Truth resides where there is faith.

Esther, however, was the only woman who understood one very simple thing: in order to be able to find her, I first had to find myself.

Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame?

The boy told himself that, on the way toward realizing his own destiny, he had learned all he needed to know, and had experienced everything he might have dreamed of.

You still haven't managed to heal the scars left by some of the injustices committed against you in your life and it doesn't do you any good. All it does is feed a constant desire to feel sorry for yourself, because you were the victim of people stronger than you. Or else it makes you go to the other extreme and disguise yourself as an avenger ready to strike out at the people who hurt you. Isn't that a waste of time?...It is human, but it's not intelligent or reasonable.

Sometimes the best of gods gift's arrive by the shattering of all the window panes.

But in the end all religions point to the same light. In between the light and us, sometimes there are too many rules. The light is here and there are no rules to follow this light.

The universe conspires to help the dreamer

From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it everyday, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind hoping that the wind would touch the boy's face, and would tell him that she was alive.

A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.

Because true love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny

We must at all costs avoid saying no because people prefer those who say yes, and this allows us to survive in hostile territory.

Although I have been through all that I have, I do not regret the many hardships I met, because it was they who brought me to the place I wished to reach.

If you can dream, you can do.

Life becomes interesting for the possibility to fulfill a dream.

we have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.If we are not reborn if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm o childhood it makes no sense to go on living.

Worshiping someone means...placing that person outside of our world. We are not worshiping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with Creation.

you would have to give up all else, I alone would expect you to be your sole and exclusive standard

Right, from now on, whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.

Sometimes, certain of God's blessings arrive by shattering all the windows. (Brida)

Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride because it was the most destructive way of being different.

There are no risk in Love, as you'll find out for yourself. People have been searching for and finding each other for thousands of years. Suddenly, he realised that the might be wrong. There was always a risk, a single risk: that one person might meet with more thatn one Soulmate in the same incarnation...

You came so that you could learn about your dreams," said the old woman. "And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.

It has been said that there is no such thing as coincidence in this world.

the power of beauty:what must the world be like for ugly women?

Man struggles to survive, not to succumb

Veronika had noticed that a lot of people she knew would talk about the horros in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in the suffering of others, because that made them believe they were happy and that life had been generous with them

Whenever a new situation presented itself, you had to remain cool and distant

Even if you slept with every man on Earth, my love will still survive.

It's the oasis," said the camel driver. "Well, why don't we go there right now?" the boy asked. "Because we have to sleep.