Paulo Coelho Quotes

Don’t close your eyes to the Universe and then complain: ‘It’s dark.

~ Paulo Coelho

When you’re in love, you’re capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries.

~ Paulo Coelho

Well, then, why should I listen to my heart?Because you will never again be able to keep it quiet.

~ Paulo Coelho

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

Those who don't understand their personal legends will fail to comprehend its teachings.

~ Paulo Coelho

...one dies of thirst just when the palm tress have appeared on the horizon.

~ Paulo Coelho

Success does not come from having one's work recognized by others. It is the fruit of a seed that you lovingly planted.

~ Paulo Coelho

Men dream more about coming home than about leaving.

~ Paulo Coelho

She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.‘I’m afraid of committing myself,’ she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic dissappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pain, loss and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes in order not to see the bad things in life.

~ Paulo Coelho

Everyone not already following their own path would begin to feel dissatisfied with themselves and be forced to make a choice: they would either have to accept an existence beset with disappointment and pain or else come to realise that everyone was born to be happy. Having made their choice, they would have no option but to change, and the great struggle, the Jihad, would begin.

~ Paulo Coelho

For millions of years, man spoke only to what he could see. Suddenly, in just one decade, 'seeing' and 'speaking' have been separated. We think we're used to it, yet we don't realize the immense impact it's had on our reflexes. Our bodies are simply not used to it. Frankly, the result is that, when we talk on the telephone, we enter a state that is similar to certain magical trances; we can discover other things about ourselves.

~ Paulo Coelho

Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.

~ Paulo Coelho

...the best way to know who we are is often to find out how others see us. This doesn't mean that we should do what others expect us to do, but it helps us to understand ourselves better.

~ Paulo Coelho

we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility.

~ Paulo Coelho

But emotions were, indeed, wild horses and they demanded to be heard. Brida let them run free for a while until they grew tired

~ Paulo Coelho

She was fighting for something, she feltalive and capable of responding to the challenges facing her.

~ Paulo Coelho

For her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

~ Paulo Coelho

Then I realize that words like optimism and hope which appear in all those self-help books that claim they'll make us more confident and better to cope with life, are just that: words.

~ Paulo Coelho

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.

~ Paulo Coelho

The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according the the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.

~ Paulo Coelho

God, in his infinite wisdom, hid Hell in the middle of Paradise, to keep us on our toes.

~ Paulo Coelho

Everyone, when they are young, knows what their destiny is. At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible.

~ Paulo Coelho

If I had a choice, if I had understood earlier that the reason my days were all the same was because I wanted them like that, perhaps...

~ Paulo Coelho

Loyalty, love and respect perhaps have never been expounded with such agility like this one ‘Loyalty has its roots in respect and respect is the fruit of Love, and Love drives out the demons of the imagination – which distrust everything and everyone – and, instead, returns purity to our gaze’. He cites that ‘Loyalty can never be imposed by force, fear, insecurity or intimidation’. ‘And because it is a choice, it will never tolerate betrayal, but will always be generous with mistakes’.

~ Paulo Coelho

You could have died later on, you could have died after peace had been declared. But, in any case, you were going to die.

~ Paulo Coelho

Reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept I was in love.

~ Paulo Coelho

it's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be

~ Paulo Coelho

And he always checks that he carries three things with him: faith, hope, and love.

~ Paulo Coelho

When we're interested in something, everything around us appears to refer to it (the mystics call these phenomena 'signs', the sceptics 'coincidence', and psychologists 'concentrated focus', although I've yet to find out what term historians would use).

~ Paulo Coelho

When we first begin fighting for our dreams, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times.

~ Paulo Coelho

She felt vulnerable and alone and had a sense that a great opportunity was slipping through her fingers. Once again, she felt that life was not treating her as it treated other people: it gave her every chance to achieve something, and just when she was close to her objective, the ground opened up and swallowed her. That's how it had been with her studies, with certain boyfriends, with certain dreams she had never shared with anyone.

~ Paulo Coelho

All we have to do is understand that we're all here for a reason and to commit ourselves to that. Then we can laugh at our sufferings, large and small and walk fearlessly, aware that each step has meaning

~ Paulo Coelho

Instead of buying something for you that you want I give you something that is mine, truly mine. A gift, a sign of respect for the person I have in front of me. Now you have a little piece of me with you which I gave you freely and spontaniously.

~ Paulo Coelho

I wept because I was re-experiencing the enthusiasm of my childhood; I was once again a child, and nothing in the world could cause me harm.

~ Paulo Coelho

Tell me about your life since I last saw you. | There are no great mysteries to tell. My path is always ther, and I do everything I can to follow it in a dignified way. | What is your path? | The path of someone seeking love. | And love's path is really complicated. | Because on that path we can go either to heaven or to hell?

~ Paulo Coelho

How can we be so arrogant? The planet is, was, and always will be stronger than us. We can't destroy it; if we overstep the mark, the planet will simply erase us from its surface and carry on existing. Why don't they start talking about not letting the planet destroy us?

~ Paulo Coelho

solitude is not absence of love, but its complement

~ Paulo Coelho

At life's most significant moments, we are always alone

~ Paulo Coelho

So he could not be hasty or impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.God placed them along my path. He had surprised himself with the thought. Until then, he had considered the omens to be things of this world, Like eating or sleeping, or like seeking love or finding a job. he had never thought of them in terms of a language used by God to indicate what he should do.

~ Paulo Coelho

I have always believed that in the lives of individuals, just as in society at large, the profoundest changes take place within a very reduced time frame.When we least expected it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready yet.The challenge will not wait.Life does not look back.A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

~ Paulo Coelho