Paulo Coelho quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.

  • I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

  • I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death. They thought nobody can make a living from being a writer in Brazil. They were not wrong.

  • Writing is a solitary experience. I'm extremely superstitious. If I talk about the book or name the title out loud before finishing, I feel the energy I need to write will be drained. It's so intimate, I can't even share it with my wife.

  • Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.

  • The major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, they deny somehow that God has a feminine face. However, if you go to the holy texts, you see there is this feminine presence.

  • I'm first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can't say why I'm one.

  • I love almost everything about my work except conferences. I am too shy in front of an audience. But I love signings and having eye contact with a reader who already knows my soul.

  • Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you. I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

  • I'm not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

  • Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

  • The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality - it connects you to reality.

  • I always was a rich person because money's not related to happiness.

  • In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.

  • The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.

  • Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.

  • When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.

  • I am not happy, and the quest for happiness as a principal objective is not part of my world. Of course, ever since I can remember, I have done what I felt like doing.

  • I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: 'Oh my God, what a blessing.' Then you realise it's important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

  • Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.

  • It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

  • The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.

  • Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

  • However happy people say they are, nobody is satisfied: we always have to be with the prettiest woman, buy a bigger house, change cars, desire what we do not have.

  • Everything is possible, from angels to demons to economists and politicians.

  • Happiness is just another of the tricks that our genetic system plays on us to carry out its only role, which is the survival of the species.

  • One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

  • Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

  • I've done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price - which has been the case most of the time.

  • I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

  • I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.

  • Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.

  • Everything for me is sacred, beginning with earth, but also going to things made by man.

  • The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.

  • I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me.

  • When I'm dancing, I'm not thinking about anything. I am here. I am totally there. You know? And the feeling is a sensation of being away from myself. My soul dances with the angels, and my body dances with my wife.

  • You're always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.

  • I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset - tears are words waiting to be written.

  • My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.

  • You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It's just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

  • Writing means sharing. It's part of the human condition to want to share things - thoughts, ideas, opinions.

  • Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it's how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

  • What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I'm someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.

  • Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

  • Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

  • I believe enlightenment or revelation comes in daily life. I look for joy, the peace of action. You need action. I'd have stopped writing years ago if it were for the money.

  • I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

  • Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.

  • I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you're really tired. It's my relaxing time.

  • You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

  • When I write a book, I write a book for myself; the reaction is up to the reader. It's not my business whether people like or dislike it.

  • You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.

  • Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.

  • We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.

  • It's not difficult for me to put my feelings into written form. I try to be concise and to go direct to the subject. This is what people like about my work, and what the critics hate.

  • Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

  • Twitter is my bar. I sit at the counter and listen to the conversations, starting others, feeling the atmosphere.

  • When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It's very simple.

  • We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.

  • I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.

  • Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I'm going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.

  • Of course, to have money is just great because you can do what you think is important to you.

  • I hate to be smart.

  • Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

  • I am a Catholic, not so committed to the church, but to the idea of the Virgin, the female face of God.

  • I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will.

  • Do no be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters, but how the war ends.

  • In war, the key to victory is the ability to surprise one's opponent.

  • Do not be ashamed to make a temporary withdrawal from the field if you see that your enemy is stronger than you; it is not winning or losing a single battle that matters, but how the war ends.

  • Borges said there are only four stories to tell: a love story between two people, a love story between three people, the struggle for power and the voyage. All of us writers rewrite these same stories ad infinitum.

  • How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?

  • The unavoidable has touched the life of every human being on the face of the earth. Some have rebounded, others have given up--but all of us have felt the wings of tragedy brushing against us.

  • We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.

  • When we venture in that unfamiliar sea, we trust blindly in those who guide us, believing that they know more than we do.

  • As he was about to climb yet another dune, his heart whispered, Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That's where I am, and thats where your treasure is.

  • Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.

  • I needed to choose between the one thing that really filled m thoughts-my love for that woman-and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me. To be honest, the decision was easy.-Lukas Jessen-Petersen

  • But people normally marry, and then they want that locked in time, so they think they're not going to change. We're going to change. Everybody's going to change. So accepting that changes are part of our lives makes marriage a blessing and not a curse, because love is stronger than anything else.

  • But emotions were, indeed, wild horses and they demanded to be heard. Brida let them run free for a while until they grew tired

  • In order to have a spiritual life, you need not enter a seminary, or fast, or abstain, or take a vow of chastity. All you have to do is have faith and accept God. From then on, each of us becomes a part of His path. We become vehicles for His miracles."

  • I ask myself: Are Defeats necessary ?Well,necessary or not, they happen.When we first begin fighting for our dream, we've no experience and make many mistakes.The Secret of life, though,is to fall seven times and to get up eight times !"

  • Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present"

  • Everyday God gives us the sun, and also the moment in wich have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Our magic moment helps us to change and send us off in search of our dreams.

  • There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

  • Excessive caution destroys the soul and the heart, because living is an act of courage, and an act of courage is always an act of love.

  • I'm an adventurer, looking for treasure

  • I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.

  • He had not a cent in his pocket, but he had faith. He had decided, the night before, that he would be as much an adventurer as the ones he had admired in books.

  • You can choose between being a victim of destiny or an adventurer who is fighting for something important.

  • We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don't, our soul dies, and agape cannot reach it.

  • His [Elijah] heart was beginning to give signs of alarm; he was enjoying being at this woman's side. Love could be a more frightening experience than standing before Ahab's soldier with an arrow aimed at his heart; if the arrow had struck him, he would be dead -and the rest was up to God. But if love struck him, he alone would have to take responsibility for the consequences.

  • Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.

  • Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.

  • My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer, the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. Tell your heart that the fear of suffering s worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with Eternity.

  • The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better." -- The Alchemist

  • The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.

  • The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.

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

  • We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.

  • 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.

  • If I could, I'd write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence

  • I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.

  • 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.

  • I like to use the term alchemy, which is the soul of the world, or those of Jung's collective unconscious. You connect with a space where everything is.

  • Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's stories begin, and "prostitute" is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.

  • Trust and start walking. We are not alone in the dark, our path will unfold as we move.

  • If we are alone, we become more alone. Life is strange

  • In love you always win, even if you lose.

  • What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite and because of their scars.

  • To change the world , we need to combine Ancient wisdom with new technologies

  • The issue is not answering questions, but leaving discussions open. Not in the sense that probably one day you are going to have an answer or you are not going to have an answer. Just live your life, do what you have to do, what you are enthusiastic about doing.

  • The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.

  • Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses. She could almost touch the destructive energy leaking out of her body. She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. Veronika wanted to spend her remaining two or three days of life behaving as inappropriately as she could.

  • close some doors today. not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere

  • Mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity.

  • Sometimes life is very mean: a person can spend days, weeks, months and years without feeling new. Then, when a door opens - a positive avalanche pours in. One moment, you have nothing, the next, you have more than you can cope with.

  • Avoiding problems you need to face is avoiding the life you need to live.

  • I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies

  • A warrior accepts defeat. He does not treat it as a matter of indifference, nor does he attempt to transform it into a victory. The pain of defeat is bitter to him; he suffers at indifference and becomes desperate with loneliness. After all this has passed, he licks his wounds and begins everything anew. A warrior knows that war is made of many battles: he goes on

  • Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share