Paulo Coelho: Quotes about people

Paulo Coelho is Brazilian lyricist and novelist. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Paulo Coelho: 1688 quotes177 likes

“People struggle to live, not to commit suicide”

Paulo Coelho

Veronika Decides to Die

“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)

“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."”

Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello

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

“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)

“The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people's opinions.”

Paulo Coelho

As quoted in Quotes That Help You Survive (2006) by Harpreet Kaur Kapoor.

“No one can learn to love by following a manual, and no one can learn to write by following a course. I’m not telling you to seek out other writers but to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“You want to know if the heart of a man or a woman can contain enough love for more than one person? … I think it's perfectly possible as long as one of those people doesn’t turn into … a Zahir.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

Source: The Zahir (2005), p. 128.

“You feel that nothing you have learned has put down roots, that while you’re capable of entering the magical universe, you cannot remain submerged in it. You feel that all of this may be nothing but a fantasy dreamed up by people to fend off their fear of death.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“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.”

Paulo Coelho

Veronika Decides to Die (1998)

“You think that you exist because you’re unhappy. Other people exist merely as a function of their problems and spend all their time talking compulsively about their children, their wives and husbands, school, work, friends. They never stop to think: I’m here. I am the result of everything that happened and will happen, but I’m here. If I did something wrong, I can put it right or at least ask forgiveness. If I did something right, that leaves me happier and more connected with the now.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

“And even when passions run high, elegance does not allow the real ties binding two people to be broken.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About Elegance

“We are used to thinking that what we give is the same as what we receive, but people who love, expecting to be loved in return, are wasting their time. Love is an act of faith, not an exchange.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Love has always passed me by

“The Divine Energy is listening to us when we speak to other people, but also when we are still and silent and able to accept solitude as a blessing.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Solitude

“Such people can say with pride: T never lost a battle.’ On the other hand, they will never be able to say: T won a battle.’”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

“I am here to tell you that there are people who have never been defeated. They are the ones who never fought.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), The Defeated Ones

“But every tribe, every people, has values that they associate with elegance: hospitality, respect, good manners.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), About Elegance