I love The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.  I have listed here my favorite quotes from this beautiful book.  This book is an inspiring and motivational read that I love to share with everyone.  You can read my updated list of Quotes from The Alchemist on EnlightenYourDay.com

• “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”
• “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

• “Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”

• “When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. “

• “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

• “Every search begins with beginners luck and ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

• “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”

• “The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other.”

• “When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force.”

• “Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World.“

• “To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.”

• “I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living now.

• “When you are loved, you can do anything in creation. When you are loved, there’s no need at all to understand what’s happening, because everything happens within you.”

• “Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity

• When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.

• Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure. You’ve got to find the treasure, so that everything you have learned along the way can make sense. “

• “All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation. Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”

• “The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.”

• “I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever understands that soul can also understand the language of things. I learned that many alchemists realized their destinies, and wound up discovering the Soul of the World, the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life. But above all, I learned that these things are all so simple they could be written on the surface of an emerald.”

• “In his pursuit of the dream, he was being constantly subjected to tests of his persistence and courage. So he could not be hasty, nor impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.”

You can read my updated list of Quotes from The Alchemist on EnlightenYourDay.com

Today, I thought I would share some interesting Paulo Coelho Quotes from an Interview:  “I look at life, using the metaphor of the journey, as a caravan: I know neither whence it came, nor where it’s going.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 “I like to use the term alchemy, which is the soul of the world, or those of Jung’s collective unconscious.  You connect with a space where everything is.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       “Omens are a language, it’s the alphabet we develop to speak to the world’s soul, or the universe’s, or God’s, whatever name you want to give it.  Like an alphabet, it is individual, you only learn it by making mistakes, and that keeps you from globalizing the spiritual quest.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                “I think the big danger of madness is not madness itself, but the habit of madness.  What I discovered during the time I spent in the asylum is that I could choose madness and spend my whole life without working, doing nothing, pretending to be mad.  It was a very strong temptation…”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      “’I can’t go on living like this. Because I lost my job at the newspaper, I’d lost my friends and had to give up the theatre…I closed the door to my bedroom and started destroying the whole room, my books that I loved so much…my records, every remnant of the past.They phoned another doctor… When he arrived, he opened the door and confronted all that destruction.  I thought they’d take me straight back to the asylum…I heard him ask me calmly, smiling, ‘What happened here.’ ‘Don’t you see? I’ve wrecked everything’ I told him.  And without batting an eye, answered, ‘Well done! Now that you’ve torn everything to bits, you can start a new life.  You’ve done exactly what you needed to do, no more, no less, you’ve destroyed a negative past in order to embark on a positive future.

Paulo Coelho recites one of his favorite poems by Jorge Luis Borges:

I will not be happy now.  It may not matter.

There are so many more things in the world.

Any random instant is as crowded

And varied as the sea.  A life is brief, and though

The hours seem long, there is another

Dark mystery that lies in wait for us-

Death, that other sea, that other arrow

That frees us from the sun, the moon, and love.

The happiness you gave me once and later

Took back from me will be obliterated.

That which was everything must turn to nothing.

I only keep the taste of my own sadness

And a vain urge that turns me to the Southside,

To a certain corner there, a certain door.