Paulo Coelho Quotes page 14 844 Quotes for Your Inspirational Journey of Love, Life, and Fulfillment

“Love rules, but no one knows where it has its throne; in order to know that secret place, you must first submit to Love.”

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

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Our fate

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

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

“No matter how you are feeling, get up every morning and prepare to let your light shine forth.”

“He's been sent by the devil to destabilize something that was already fragile. How could I fall in love so quickly with someone I don't even know?”

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), What should survivors tell their children?

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

“When we can do nothing else, we can still love, without expecting any reward or change or gratitude.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

“What is success?" poses the Copt. "It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.”

“A life is never useless. Each soul that came down to Earth is here for a reason.”

Variant: What is success? It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace
Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“Enjoy the questions and forget the answers.”

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

“By taking risks. By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love, as long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“As he mused about these things, he realised that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.”

“Even If you're doing the same thing over & over, U need to discover something new, fantastic & unbelievable that went unnoticed the time before.”

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 44.

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

“He hadn't a cent in his pocket, but he had faith!”

“Problems of the heart always bruised the soul.”

Source: The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“It is said that the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.”

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

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 132.

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

“The rose is a rose from the time it is a seed to the time it dies. Within it, at all times, it contains its whole potential. It seems to be constantly in the process of change: Yet at each state, at each moment, it is perfectly all right as it is.”

“The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.”

Source: Warrior of the Light

“She looked at her own past, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn't been
her fault, but the fault
of that insecure little boy, who had given up after the first attempt.”

Source: The Alchemist

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

“Walk neither faster nor slower than your own soul. Because it is your soul that will teach you the usefulness of each step you take.”

“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?”

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir

“Find someone who makes you smile, because it only takes a smile to make a day better”

Paulo Coelho book The Devil and Miss Prym

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

“You had to take risks, follow some paths and abandon others.”

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 130.

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

“I have won important things for myself, but I'm going to destroy them, because I tell myself they have lost their meaning. I know that is not true. I know they are important, and that if I destroy them, I'll be destroying myself, as well.”

Paulo Coelho book The Valkyries

Source: The Valkyries

“I can speak to my soul only when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads.”

“Record things in your heart. It’s more important than trying to show people what you’re experiencing.”

Source: Aleph

Paulo Coelho book Adultery

Source: Adultery

“People struggle to live, not to commit suicide”

“Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station. And what you’re doing now isn’t traveling, it’s just changing countries, which is completely different”

Veronika Decides to Die

“We learn in the past, but we are not the result of that. We suffered in the past, loved in the past, cried and laughed in the past, but that’s of no use to the present. The present has its challenges, its good and bad side. We can neither blame nor be grateful to the past for what is happening now. Each new experience of love has nothing whatsoever to do with past experiences. It’s always new.”

Aleph (2011)

“Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: “I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward.”

Aleph (2011)

“First develop a strategy that utilizes everything around you. The best way to prepare for a challenge is to cultivate the ability to call on an infinite variety of responses.”

I lived my life and did what I had to do.”
Aleph (2011)

“A warrior of the light never confuses tension with anxiety.”

Aleph (2011)

“Of giving, even when I have nothing”

(1997)

“Past and future exist only in our memory. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India, they use the word ‘karma,’ for lack of any better term.”

Aleph (2011)

“Athena's great problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact, either. Did she pay a price? She certainly did. But she would have paid a still higher price if she had repressed her natural exuberance. She would have been bitter, frustrated, always concerned about "what other people might think," always saying, "I'll just sort these things out, then I'll devote myself to my dream," always complaining "that the conditions are never quite right."”

Aleph (2011)

Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello

Deidre O'Neill, known as Edda, p. 11.
The Witch of Portobello (2007)

“In magic—and in life—there is only the present moment, the now. You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. “Time” doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and about why we didn’t act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we’re going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don’t want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.”

“Look me in the eye and never forget what I'm about to tell you. There are only two prohibitions, one according to man's law, the other according to God's. Never force a sexual relationship on anyone, because that is considered to be rape. And never have sexual relations with children, because that is the worst of all sins. Apart from that, you're free. There's always someone who wants exactly what you want.”

Aleph (2011)

“Pitiful is the person who is afraid of taking risks.”

Mari to Veronika.
Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

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

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)

“Life is a dream from which we wake only when we meet death.”

As quoted in Publishing Tips : Weekly Strategies for the Independent Writer‎ (2008) by Linda A. Lavid, p. 57.

“Time neither moves nor is stationary. Time changes.”

Aleph (2011)

“I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me—sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … and, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects.”

Aleph (2011)

“Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life.”

Aleph (2011)

“The wise men understood that this natural world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That's what I mean by action.”

Aleph (2011)

“In my world, everything is possible and everything is relative.”

Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 151.

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir (2005), p. 167.

“The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything.”

“Here I am, trying to persuade myself that I always give the best of myself, and nature is telling me exactly the opposite: anyone truly committed to life never stops walking.”

Aleph (2011)