Paulo Coelho: Quotes about life

Paulo Coelho is Brazilian lyricist and novelist. Explore interesting quotes on life.

Paulo Coelho: 1688 quotes177 likes

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

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

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

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

“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”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

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.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

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

“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.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

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

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

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

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“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.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“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.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms. For example, I can’t see who is in the next carriage, but it contains people traveling in the same time as me, as you, as everyone. The fact that we can’t speak to them or know what’s going on in that other carriage is completely irrelevant. They are there. So what we call ‘life’ is a train with many carriages. Sometimes we’re in one, sometimes we’re in another, and sometimes we cross between them, when we dream or allow ourselves to be swept away by the extraordinary.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign o terror in the shadow of the guillotine.”

The Devil and Miss Prym‎ [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. 86.

“If I were to persuade just one person to stop fighting for something they were convinced was worthwhile, I would end up persuading myself, and my whole life would be diminished.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

This has sometimes been paraphrased: "The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them."
Source: The Alchemist (1988), p. 15.

“I'll tell everyone that the children are my reason for living, when in reality my life is their reason for living.”

Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

“Life has been very hard on me, but, at the same time, it has taught me a great deal.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“May love be your guide in every moment of your life.”

Though widely attributed to Coelho on the internet, and originally added here within the section for The Alchemist, this specific form has not been located in any editions available in online searches. The directive "Let love be your guide" is a very old one, and did not originate with Coelho.
Misattributed

“She believed herself to be completely normal. Two very simple reasons lay behind her decision to die, and she was sure that, were she to leave a note explaining, many people would agree with her.
The first reason: everything in her life was the same and, once her youth was gone, it would be downhill all the way, with old age beginning to leave irreversible marks, the onset of illness, the departure of friends. She would gain nothing by continuing to live; indeed, the likelihood of suffering only increased. The second reason was more philosophical: Veronika read the newspapers, watched TV, and she was aware of what was going on in the world. Everything was wrong, and she had no way of putting things right — that gave her a sense of complete powerlessness.”

Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

“Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say “yes” to life?”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

“Really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

“Never be ashamed. Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle. How will I know which is which? By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.”

Paulo Coelho book Brida