“Man needs what's worst in him in order to achieve what's best in him.”
Source: The Devil and Miss Prym
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Paulo Coelho 844
Brazilian lyricist and novelist 1947Related quotes
“Logic only gives man what he needs. Magic gives him what he wants.”
Another Roadside Attraction (1971)
Man's Search for Meaning (1946; 1959; 1984)
“If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him”
Canto XIII
The Cantos
Context: If a man have not order within him
He can not spread order about him;
And if a man have not order within him
His family will not act with due order;
And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions.
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.”
Texts and Pretexts (1932), p. 5
Variant: Experience is not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you.
Source: Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology With Commentaries
Context: The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.
“A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.”
