Paulo Coelho Quotes

People give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love. Anyone tries to possess a flower will have to watch its beauty fading. But if you simply look at a flower on a field, you will keep it forever, because the flower is part of the evening and the sunset and the smell of damp earth and the clouds on the horizon.

~ Paulo Coelho

Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

~ Paulo Coelho

And to those who believe that adventures are i say try routine: it kills you far more quickly.

~ Paulo Coelho

The adrenaline and stress of an adventure are better than a thousand peaceful days.

~ Paulo Coelho

She [the Virgin Mary] was normal. She had already had other children. The Bible tells us that Jesus had two brothers. Virginity, as it relates to Jesus, is based on a different thing: Mary initiated a new generation of grace. A new era began. She is the cosmic bride, Earth, which opens to the heavens and allows itself to be fertilized.

~ Paulo Coelho

And when I think about it, I guess it is true that people always arrive at the right moment at the place where someone awaits them

~ Paulo Coelho

Now she knew where to find me, if it was written that we would meet again, we would. The important thing is to allow fate to intervene in our lives and to decide what is best for everyone.

~ Paulo Coelho

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfill our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

~ Paulo Coelho

The act of living one's own destiny includes a series of stages that are far beyond our understanding, whose objective is always to... make us learn the lessons necessary to fulfill our own destiny.

~ Paulo Coelho

What's the world's greatest lie?' the boy asked, completely surprised.'It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.

~ Paulo Coelho

All this was new to me. Life takes us by surprise and orders us to move towards the unknown - even when we don't want to and we think we don't need to.

~ Paulo Coelho

In the beginning there was only a small amount of injustice abroad in the world, but everyone who came afterwards added their portion, always thinking it was very small and unimportant, and look where we have ended up today.

~ Paulo Coelho

It's now what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.

~ Paulo Coelho

If evil exists its to be found in our fears.

~ Paulo Coelho

Men who have nothing to lose never give a thought for eternal life.

~ Paulo Coelho

Evil would never bring Good, however much they wanted to believe that it would. By the time they discovered the truth, it would be too late.

~ Paulo Coelho

Once the soul has left the body it had to walk across a bridge as narrow as a knife edge, with paradise on the right and, on the left, a series of circles that lead down into the darkness inside the earth. Before crossing the bridge, each person had to place all his virtues in his right hand and all his sins in his left, and the imbalance between the two meant that the person always fell towards the side to which his actions on Earth had inclined him.

~ Paulo Coelho

she, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child.

~ Paulo Coelho

What made you fall in love with a prostitute?'I didn't understand it myself at the time. But I've thought about it since, and I think it was because, knowing that your body would never be mine alone, I had to concentrate on conquering your soul.''Weren't you jealous?'You can't say to the spring: Come now and last as long as possible. You can only say: Come and bless me with your hope, and stay as long as you can.

~ Paulo Coelho

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

~ Paulo Coelho

There are two kinds of idiots - those who don't take action because they have received a threat, and those who think they are taking action because they have issued a threat.

~ Paulo Coelho

To me, a witch is a woman that is capable of letting her intuition take hold of her actions, that communes with her environment, that isn't afraid of facing challenges.

~ Paulo Coelho

Do something instead of killing time. Because time is killing you.

~ Paulo Coelho

People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.

~ Paulo Coelho

But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a universal language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.

~ Paulo Coelho

I am tired of days that are all the same.

~ Paulo Coelho

If theater is ritual, then dance is too... It's as if the threads connecting us to the rest of the world were washed clean of preconceptions and fears. When you dance, you can enjoy the luxury of being you.

~ Paulo Coelho

Jealously would kill you from inside, if you water the plant of jealousy with anger instead of hard work

~ Paulo Coelho

Feelings do not grow old along with the body. Feelings form part of a world I don’t know, but it’s a world where there’s no time, so space, no frontiers.

~ Paulo Coelho

As she had been walking from the ward to that room, she had felt such pure hatred that now she had no more rancor left in her heart. She had finally allowed her negative feelings to surface, feelings that had been repressed for years in her soul. She had actually FELT them, and they were no longer necessary, they could leave.

~ Paulo Coelho

I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate.

~ Paulo Coelho

The Warrior knows that no man is an island.He cannot fight alone; whatever his plan, he depends on other people. He needs to discuss his strategy, to ask for help, and, in moments of relaxation, to have someone with whom he can sit by the fire, someone he can regale with tales of battle.

~ Paulo Coelho

Knowing someone’s name meant knowing that the other person was a human being and not “the enemy.” Knowing someone’s name transformed him into a unique and special individual, with a past and a future, with ancestors and possibly descendants, a person who has known triumphs and failures. People are their names; they’re proud of them; they repeat them thousands of times in their lifetime and identify with them. It’s the first word they learn after “Daddy” and “Mummy.

~ Paulo Coelho

She hated the love she had been given, because it had asked for nothing in return, which was absurd, unreal, against the laws of nature

~ Paulo Coelho

Hatred. Something almost as physical as walls, pianos, or nurses.

~ Paulo Coelho

When I took the pills, I wanted to kill someone I hated. I didn't know that other Veronikas existed inside me, Veronikas that I could love.

~ Paulo Coelho

Human beings can withstand a week without water, two weeks without food, many years of homelessness, but not loneliness. It is the worst of all tortures, the worst of all sufferings.

~ Paulo Coelho

The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment.

~ Paulo Coelho

When we turn around & come face to face with our destiny, we discover that words (spoken) are not enough. I know so many people who are brilliant speakers but are quite incapable of practising what they preach. It's one thing to describe a situation & quite another to experience it. I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.

~ Paulo Coelho

People had been trying to understand the universe through love ever since the beginning of time.

~ Paulo Coelho