“Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found.”

— Paulo Coelho , book The Witch of Portobello

Source: The Witch of Portobello

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive a mortal blow. The perfect crime--for we don't know w…" by Paulo Coelho?

Paulo Coelho 844

Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947

Related quotes

“And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Charlie Rose: An Interview with Carl Sagan http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/4553, May 27, 1996.
Context: We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don’t know anything about it?

“This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Demon-Haunted World : Science as a Candle in the Dark (1995), Ch. 2 : Science and Hope, p. 26
Context: We've arranged a global civilization in which the most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting, profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.

“We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Ellie Dunn, Act II
1910s, Heartbreak House (1919)

“If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), The Disciple and Unbelievers, p. 185.

“We have hands; we can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body. And that's why God needs us. Because God loves to feel things through our hands.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“Perhaps you have heard that Baroness Werefkin died in February. It was a great blow to me. Yes, indeed, sooner or later we have to pay for our mistakes once made. And often so severely.”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

Quote of Jawlensky's letter, 12 June, 1938 to P. Willibrord Verkade, as cited in Leben und Werk, 1860- 1938, Bernd Fäthke, Prestel Verlag, 1980, ISBN 9783791308869, as cited on http://www.fembio.org/english/biography.php/woman/biography/marianne-werefkin/#literatur on the website Fembio, by Luise F. Pusch - transl. Joey Horsley, p. 19
1936 - 1941

“This mortal life is like a meadow where the serpent lies among the flowers and grass, and if anything we see there pleases our eyes, the result is to enlime our souls more deeply.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Questa vita terrena è quasi un prato,
che 'l serpente tra' fiori et l'erba giace;
et s'alcuna sua vista agli occhi piace,
è per lassar piú l'animo invescato.
Canzone 99, st. 2
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life