Paulo Coelho

“This is the most dangerous of obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. 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.”

“The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far...”

“The adrenaline and stress of an adventure are better than a thousand peaceful days.”

“Dobrodosao na mjesto gdje uvijek kazemo da je nebo plavo, cak i kad je sivo jer poznajemo boju iza oblaka.”

“Only someone who can say 'I love you' is capable of saying 'I forgive you.”

“I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.”

“Sometimes war is necessary in order that we can finally find peace. Sometimes fear is necessary for the soul to find its path again.”

“Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment though, is outside of time, it's Eternity. It isn;t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It's what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.”

“That's because like everyone else on the planet, you believed that time would teach you to grow closer to God. But time doesn't teach; it merely brings us a sense of weariness and of growing older.”

“Love always triumphs over what we call death. That's why there's no need to grieve for our loved ones, because they continue to be loved and remain by our side.”

“God will help us - said the holy man. - But first let us understand the reason for these pains. I suggest Your Majesty confesses now, for confession makes men face up to their problems, and liberates much guilt.”

“But a warrior is never distracted.”

“To accumulate love means luck, to accumulate hatred means a calamity. Whoever does not recognize the door to problems will one day leave it open, letting tragedy in.”

“Wherever your heat is there youwill find your treasure.”

“After weeks on the road, listening to a language you don’t understand, using a currency whose value you don’t comprehend, walking down streets you’ve never walked down before, you discover that your old “I,” along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realize that buried deep in your unconscious mind there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences.”

“Real love changes and grows with time and discovers new ways of expressing itself.”

“Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents”

“U svakom medjuljudskom odnosu najvazniji je razgovor; ali ljudi se vise ne bave time: da sjednu da bi razgovarali i slusali jedni druge. Idu u pozoriste, bioskop, gledaju televiziju, slusaju radio, citaju knjige ali gotovo da i ne razgovaraju. Ako zelimo da promjenimo svijet, moramo da se vratimo u doba kada su se ratnici okupljali oko vatere i pricali price.”

“knowing that the purpose of this promis is simply to make parting easier-Aleph”

“As he looked up at the clouds or down at the precipice, he realized that this woman was the most important thing in his life; that she was the explanation, the sole reason for the existence of those rocks, that sky, that winter. If she were not there with him, it wouldn't matter if all the angels of heaven came flying down to comfort him--Paradise would make no sense.”

“Am I cured?” “No. You’re someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness.” “Is wanting to be different a serious illness?” “It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It’s a distortion of nature, it goes against God’s laws, for in all the world’s woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it’s insane to be different, and that’s why you chose to live in Villete, because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?” Mari nodded. “People go against nature because they lack the courage to be different, and then the organism starts to produce Vitriol, or bitterness, as this poison is more commonly known.”

“Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all.”

“If it's still in your mind, it is worth taking the risk”

“I will at least have gained one veryhappy day in my life. Considering the way the world is, one happy day is almost amiracle.”

“You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring.”

“Give time time.”

“Joy is like sex – it begins and ends. I want pleasure. I want to be contended, but happiness? I no longer fall into that trap.”

“Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.”

“Possibly. Basically,everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality.”

“How the path was forged”

“A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point he asked: ‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me?’ His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson: I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.’ Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special. ‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’ ‘That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.’ ‘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 according to His will.’ ‘Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpner. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person. ‘Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.’ ‘Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.’ ‘Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. in just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action”

“los días se le hacían demasiado largos porque solamente pasaba diez minutos con el amor de su vida, y miles de horas pensando en él.”

“People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower on a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.”

“I'm an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There's one that says, 'Everything that happens once can never happen again. But anything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

“If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.”

“She Knows three things:(a) that men are less treacherous than women;(b) that they never notice what a woman is wearing because they're always mentally undressing her,(c) that as long as you've got breasts,thighs,buttocks and belly in good trim, you can conquer the world.”

“If he waits for the ideal moment, he will never set off; he requires a touch of madness to take the next step. The warrior uses that touch of madness. For - in both love and war - it is impossible to foresee everything.”

“That's how love got lost ... when we started laying down rules for when love should or shouldn't appear.”

“Becoming conscious of three important things:First, as soon as people decide to confront a problem, they realize that they are far more capable than they thought they were. Second, all energy and all knowledge come from the same unknown source, which we usually call God. What I've tried to do in my life, ever since I first started out on what I believe to be my path, is to honour that energy, to connect up with it every day, to allow myself to be guided by the signs, to learn by doing and not by thinking about doing. Third, that no one is alone in their troubles; there is always someone else thinking, rejoicing, or suffering in the same way, and that gives us the strength to confront the challenge before us.”

“Knowing that doesn't make any difference. People do their best not to remember and not to accept the immense magical potential they possess, because that would upset their neat little universes.”

“I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents' wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person "for the rest of their lives", to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying "no" or "it's over", to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn't even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best. And so their identical days and nights passed, days and nights in which adventure was just a word in a book or an image o the television that was always on, and whenever a door opened, they would say “I’m not interested. I’m not in the mood.” How could they possibly know if they were in the mood or not if they had never tried? But there was no point in asking; the truth was they were afraid of any change that would upset the world they had grown used to.”

“If you want to see a rainbow you have to learn to see the rain.”

“No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they're doing. even if one complains later on that they were used.”

“Seize every oppurtunity that life offers you because when oppotunities go, it will take a long time to come back.”

“Only cowards hide behind silence.”

“Freedom only exists when love is present.”

“And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

“When we want something, we have to have a clear purpose in mind for the thing that we want. The only reason for seeking a reward is to know what to do with that reward”

“Žmogus silpnas, todėl visada bando nuo savęs nuslėpti didžiąją Mirties tiesą. Jis nesuvokia, jog tiktai ji skatina gyvenime atlikti pačius didžiausius darbus. Žmogus bijo nuklysti į tamsą, jį siaubingai gąsdina nežinomybė, ir tą baimę įmanoma įveikti tik nepamirštant, kad jo dienos suskaičiuotos. Žmogus nesupranta, jog, susitaikęs su Mirtimi, sugebėtų ryžtis didesniems darbams, pasiekti nepalyginamai didesnių pergalių savo kasdienėje kovoje, nes neturi ko prarasti - Mirtis neišvengiama.”

“Man needs what's worst in him in order to achieve what's best in him.”