Paulo Coelho

“If you must say yes, say it with an open heart. If you must say no, say it without fear.”

“What is the Other?" they ask.The Other is the one who taught me whatI should be like, but not what I am. The Other believes that it is our obligation to spend our entire life thinking about how to get our hands on as much money a possible so that we will not die of hunger when we are old. So we think so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And then it's too late."And you? Who are you?"I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do. It's just that the Other, afraid of disappointment,kept me from taking action."But there is suffering in life," one of the listeners said.And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for."That's it?" another listener asked.Yes, that's it. When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The Other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but I will never let the Other into myself again----even though it has already tried to frighten me, warning me that it's risky not to think about the future.From the moment that I ousted the Other from my life, the Divine Energy began to perform its miracles.”

“Life moves very fast. It rushes from Heaven to Hell in a matter of seconds.”

“Writing is one of the most solitary activities in the world.”

“The music could even penetrate his remote world, more distant than the moon itself; it could even perform miracles.”

“If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.”

“People no longer try to decipher the mystery of life but choose instead to be a part of it.”

“Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,...”

“We are not worshipping anyone or anything, we are simply communing with creation.”

“Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move toward the unknown -even when we don't want to and when we think we don't need to.”

“But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”

“No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them.”

“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue following their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist.“Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer."From then on, the boy understood his heart. He asked it, please, never to stop speaking to him. He asked that, when he wandered far from his dreams, his heart press him and sound the alarm. The boy swore that, every time he heard the alarm, he would heed its message.”

“I think that if we look for love courageously, it reveals itself, and we wind up attracting even more love. If one person really wants us, everyone does. But if we’re alone, we become even more alone. Life is strange.”

“Love is like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day, you want more. You’re not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things. You think about the person you love for two minutes, and forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he’s not there, you feel like an addict who can’t get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you’re willing to do anything for love.”

“Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.”

“My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.”

“making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision.”

“Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”

“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.”

“Sorrows do not last forever when we are journeying towards the thing we have always wanted.”

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

“She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.‘I’m afraid of committing myself,’ she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.”

“The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love.”

“Often in the search for your destiny you will find yourself obliged to change direction”

“She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger”

“Zuan Ziu doğadan bahsediyorKış geldiği zaman, ağaçlar yapraklarının döküldüğünü görünce üzüntüyle iç geçiriyor olmalı. Kendi kendilerine şöyle diyorlardır: Bir daha asla eskisi gibi olamayacağız.Elbette. Yoksa kendilerini yenilemenin ne anlamı kalır? Yeni çıkacak olan yaprakların kendi kişilikleri olacaktır, onlar yeni gelen ve bir öncekiyle asla aynı olmayacak bir yaz mevsimine ait olacaklardır. Yaşamak değişmektir; ve mevsimler bize bu dersi her yıl tekrar öğretir. Değişim bir depresyon döneminden geçmek demektir: Eskiden olduğumuz şeyi unutmak zorundayızdır ve yeni geleni de bilemeyiz. Ama biraz sabırlı olursak, bahar sonunda mutlaka gelir ve o zaman çaresizce geçirdiğimiz kışı unuturuz.Değişim ve yenilenme hayatın kanunlarıdır. Sadece bize mutluluk getirmek için var olan şeyler yüzünden acı çekmektense, onlara alışmak daha iyidir. (tarafından 16 Nisan 2006 Pazar tarihinde yazılan bir makaleden alınmıştır)”

“About the nature of human beings. I discovered that confronted by temptation, we will always fall. Given the right circumstances, every human being on this earth would be willing to commit evil.”

“The danger of an adventure is worth a thousand days of ease and comfort”

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

“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”

“Man struggles to survive, not to succumb”

“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.”

“Who dares, win”

“I am surprised how difficult for people is to say "I love you". They only say the three magic words when they are sure they will hear "I love you too" back. C'mon! Spread the energy of love without expecting anything! Cowards are incapable of expressing love; it is the prerogative of the brave”

“JOY goes against the foundations of mathematics: it multiplies when we divide.”

“Hmm..." said the old man, looking at all sides of the book, as if it were some strange object. "This is an important book, but it's really irritating."The boy was shocked. The old man knew how to read, and had already read the book. And if the book was irritating, as the old man had said, the boy still had time to change it for another."It's a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say," continued the old man. "It describes people's inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie.""What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised."It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.”

“i am convinced that no one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone.that is the true experience of freedom:having the most important thing in the world without owning it.”

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

“Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.”

“And suddenly, in the middle of the central nave, I realize something very important: the cathedral is me, it is all of us. We are all growing and changing shape, we notice certain weaknesses that need to be corrected, we don't always choose the best solutions, but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent, in order to do honor not to the walls or the doors or the windows, but to the empty space inside, the space where we worship and venerate what is dearest and most important to us.”

“I don't regret my painful times, i bare my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that that smile dimmed by tears”

“The taste of things recovered is the sweetest honey we will ever know.”

“But the greatest wisdom could be blinded by the glare of vanity.”

“I wanted to...feel hatred and love, despair and tedium-- all those simple, yet foolish things that make up everyday life but that give pleasure to your existence. 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 are crazy; they just keep repeating what others tell them to.”

“It isn't the desire to abide by the law that makes everyone behave as society requires, but the fear of punishment. Each one of us carries a gallows inside us. ”

“Even God has a hell: his love of Mankind.”

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

“If you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.”

“You must always know what it is that you want.”