I happened to read the book "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. Some excerpts that I could refer often:
- Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
- World's greatest lie: 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.
- If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it.
- Everything in life has its price.
- In money there was a magic; whoever has money is never really alone.
- When you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favour. (or) When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.
- Everyone see the world in terms of what they would like to see happen, not what actually does.
- You must always know what it is that you want.
- Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
- There was a language in the world that everyone understand. 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.
- Making a decision was only the beginning of things. 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.
- Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the history of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written there.
- People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.
- It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.
- Love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny. If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love.
- One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
- The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom.
- All you have to do is contemplate a simple grain of sand, and you will see in it all the marvels of creation.
- Naturally our heart is afraid that, in pursuing our dream, we might lose everything we've won.
- People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them.
- Every second in searching our dreams is an encounter with God.
- The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.
- When we truly search for our dream, every day will be luminous, because every hour was a part of the dream we would find it. When we truly search for our dream, we will discover things along the way that we will never see if we don't have the courage to try things that seem impossible.
- Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
- There is only thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
- Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.
- No project is completed until its objective has been achieved.
