Paulo Coelho

“At this moment, many people have stopped living. They do not become angry, nor cry out; they merely wait for time to pass. They did not accept the challenges of life, so life no longer challenges them”

“Life attracts life.”

“Life is like cooking: before choosing what you love, try everything... ♥”

“You are your own best friend. Never ever, put yourself down.”

“We have 2 big problems here: 1] knowing when to start 2] knowing when to stop”

“Be crazy! But learn how to be crazy without being the center of attention. Be brave enough to live different.”

“we’re allowed to make a lot of mistakes in our lives, except the mistake that destroy us”

“Der gute Kampf ist der, den wir im Namen unserer Träume führen. Wenn sie mit aller Macht in unserer Jugend aufflammen, haben wir zwar viel Mut, doch wir haben noch nicht zu kämpfen gelernt. Wenn wir aber unter vielen Mühen zu kämpfen gelernt haben, hat uns der Kampfesmut verlassen. Deshalb wenden wir uns gegen uns selber und werden zu unseren schlimmsten Feinden. Wir sagen, dass unsere Träume Kindereien, zu schwierig zu verwirklichen seien oder nur daher rührten, dass wir von den Realitäten des Lebens keine Ahnung hätten. Wir töten unsere Träume, weil wir Angst davor haben, den guten Kampf aufzunehmen. [...] Das erste Symptom, dass wir unsere Träume töten, ist, dass wir nie Zeit haben. Die meistbeschäftigen Menschen, die ich in meinem Leben kennengelernt habe, waren zugleich auch die, die immer für alles Zeit hatten. Diejenigen, die nichts taten, waren immer müde, bemerkten nicht, wie wenig sie schafften, und beklagten sich ständig darüber, dass der Tag zu kurz sei. In Wahrheit hatten sie Angst davor, den guten Kampf zu kämpfen. Das zweite Symptom dafür, dass unsere Träume tot sind, sind unsere Gewissheiten. Weil wir das Leben nicht als ein grosses Abenteuer sehen, das es zu leben gilt, glauben wir am Ende, dass wir uns dem wenigen, was wir vom Leben erbeten haben, weise, gerecht und korrekt verhalten. {...]Das dritte Symptom für den Tod unserer Träume ist schließlich der Friede. Das Leben wird zu einem einzigen Sonntagnachmittag, verlangt nichts Grosses von uns, will nie mehr von uns, als wir zu geben bereit sind. Wir halten uns dann für reif, glauben, dass wir unsere kindischen Phantasien überwunden und die Erfüllung auf persönlicher und beruflicher Ebene erlangt haben. Wir reagieren überrascht, wenn jemand in unserem Alter sagt, dass er noch das oder jenes vom Leben erwartet. Aber in Wahrheit, ganz tief im Inneren unserer Herzens, wissen wir, dass wir es in Wirklichkeit nur aufgegeben haben, um unsere Träume zu kämpfen, den guten Kampf zu führen.”

“It is easy to suffer for a cause or for a mission; this ennobles the heart of the person suffering. But how to explain suffering because of a man? It's not explainable. With that kind of suffering, a person feels as if they're in hell, because there is no nobility, no greatness - only misery.”

“In fairy tales, the princesses kiss the frogs, and the frogs become princes. In real life, the pricesses kiss princes, and the princes turn into frogs.”

“Dream and love are just words - until you decide to experience them”

“Hurry up: your dreams are waiting for you, but they will not wait forever”

“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.”

“LIVE. If you live, god will live with you. If you refuse to run his risks, he'll retreat to that distant heaven and be merely a subject for philosophical speculation.”

“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 didn't quite know what the relationship was between lunatics and the moon, but it must be a strong one, if they used a word like that to describe the insane.”

“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.”

“That's all anyone has, and it's always brief, although, of course, some people believe they have a past where they can accumulate things and a future where they will accumulate still more. By the way, speaking of the present moment, do you masturbate a lot?”

“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.”

“Your answer is the logical, coherent answer an absolutely normal person would give: It's a tie! A lunatic, however, would say that what I have around my neck is a ridiculous, useless bit of colored cloth tied in a very complicated way, which makes it harder to get air into your lungs and difficult to turn your neck. I have to be careful when I'm anywhere near a fan, or I could be strangled by this bit of cloth.If a lunatic were to ask me what this tie is for, I would have to say, absolutely nothing. It's not even purely decorative, since nowadays it's become a symbol of slavery, power, aloofness. The only really useful function a tie serves is the sense of relief when you get home and take it off; you feel as if you've freed yourself from something, though quite what you don't know.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“La vida es un juego fuerte y alucinante, la vida es lanzarse en paracaídas, es arriesgarse, caer y volver a levantarse, es alpinismo, es querer subir a lo alto de uno mismo, y sentirse insatisfecho y angustiado cuando no se consigue.”

“Before I die, I want to fight for life.”

“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.”

“Anyone who lives in her own world is crazy. Like schizophrenics, psychopaths, maniacs. I mean people who are different from others.'Like you?'On the other hand,' Zedka continued, pretending not to have heard the remark, 'you have Einstein, saying that there was no time or space, just a combination of the two. Or Columbus, insisting that on the other side of the world lay not an abyss but a continent. Or Edmund Hillary, convinced that a man could reach the top of Everest. Or the Beatles, who created an entirely different sort of music and dressed like people from another time. Those people--and thousands of others--all lived in their own world.”

“Love transforms and love cures;but,sometimes,love builds deadly traps and can end up destroying a person who had resolved to give him or herself completely.What is this complex feeling which,deep down,is the only reason we continue to live,struggle and improve?”

“It is part of the human nature always to judge others very severely and,when the wind turns against us,always to find an excuse for our own misdeeds,or to blame someone else for our mistakes.”

“We always have the necessary resources to face the storms that life throws at us, but most of the time,those resources are locked up in the depths of our heart and we waste an enormous amount of time trying to find them.By the time we've found them,we already been defeated by adversity.”

“The warrior of light knows the importance of intuition. In the midst of battle, he does not have time to think of the enemy's blows, and so he uses his instinct and obeys his angel. in times of peace, he deciphers the signs that God sends him. People say, "He's mad." Or, "He lives in a fantasy world." Or even, "How can he possibly believe in such illogical things?" But the warrior knows that intuition is God's alphabet and he continues listening to the wind and talking to the stars.”

“Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings.”

“Collective madness is called sanity ..”

“What makes life interesting are the challenges we face.”

“Work is a blessing when it helps us to think about what we are doing; but it becomes a curse when its sole use is to stop us thinking about the meaning of life.”

“I understand once again that the greatness of God always reveals itself in the simple things.”

“We must struggle for our dreams, but when certain paths prove impossible, it would be best to save our energies in order to travel other roads.”

“Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down wonderful opportunities simply because we don't know what to do with it.”

“When something undesirable grows in my soul, I ask Gd to give me th courage to mercilessly pluck it out.”

“May be God created the desert so that man could appreciate the date trees”

“Love one another, but let’s try not to possess one another.”

“now that she realized she had been waiting for him—she did not like that.”

“Writing is easy: just stare at the screen of your computer until a tear drops on your keyboard.”

“life is really generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend”

“And she already has her treasure: it’s you.”

“No matter how you feel today, get up, dress up & show up”

“When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.”

“You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure.You experienced it today and found peace.That's why I'm telling you:Don't get used to it,because it's very easy to become habituated:it's a very powerful drug.It's in our daily lives,in our hidden sufferings,in the sacrifices we make,blaming love for the destruction of our dreams.Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it's seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or se-denial.Or cowardice.However much we may reject it,we human human beings always find a way of being with pain,of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.”

“While most of humanity was scrabbling for a piece of bread,a roof over their head and a job that would allow them to live with dignity,Ralf Hart had all of that,and it only made him feel more wretched.If he looked back on what his life had been lately,he had perhaps managed two or three days when he had woken up,looked at the sun-or the rain-and felt glad to see the morning,just happy,without wanting anything,planning anything or asking anything in exchange.Apart from those days,the rest of his existence had been wasted on dreams,both frustrated and realized-a desire to go beyond himself,to go beyond his limitations;he had spent his life trying to prove something,but he didn't know what or to whom.”

“Everyone knows how to love,because we are all born with that gift.Some people have a natural talent for it but the majority of us have to re-learn,to remember how to love,and everyone,without exception,needs o burn on the bonfire of past emotions,to relieve certain joys and griefs,certain ups and downs,until they can see the connecting thread that exists behind each new encounter;because there is a connecting thread.”