THE ALCHEMIST:BEDROCK OF WISDOM

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho is a novel I won’t grow tired reading, as it never failed to bring comfort to my heart and soul; and continually reminds my commitment of claiming my life dreams. Over holiday, I took time off and found leisure time to re-read The Alchemist and traveled along with Santiago deciphering illuminated poetic style, metaphors and deep insights embedded in journey to pyramids. I found treasure in this book and generously shares to all of you bedrock of wisdom that makes you understand more about yourself and about life.

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and get up eight times”

“Defeat - necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin to fighting our dream, we have to experience and make mistakes.

“Each man kills the thing he loves.” – Quoting Oscar Wilde

“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.”

“Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same current.”

“Everything in life has its price. This is what the Warriors of the Light try to teach.”

“It’s called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner’s luck – a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with taste of success.”

“You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.”

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon – A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep.”

“When you want something, the entire universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“All things are one.”

“The Prophet gave us the Koran, and left us just five obligations to satisfy during our lives. The most important is to believe only in the one true God.”

“You must always know what it is that you want.”

“I have been told that beauty is the great seducer of men.”

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

“Maktub – It is written!”

“Never stop dreaming; follow the omens.”

“Making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes 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.”

“The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.”

“There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten. I am in search of that universal language, among other things. I have to find a man who knows that universal language - An alchemist.”

“The closer one gets to realizing hid Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being.”

“Hunches – intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.”

“We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it’s our life or our possessions and property, but this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.”

“People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.”

“We make a lot of detours, but we’re always heading for the same direction.”

“Once you get into the desert, there’s no going back, and, when you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward. The rest is up to Allah, including the danger.”

“Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive…and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us.”

“Eat when it’s time to eat. And move along when it’s time to move along.”

“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 to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.”

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

“It’s not what enters men’s mouth that’s evil, it’s what comes out of their mouth that is.”

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

“If what one finds is made of pure matter, it will never spoil. And one can always come back. If what you had found was only a moment of light, like the explosion of a star, you would find nothing on your return.”

“Listen to your heart. It knows all things, because it came from the Soul of the World, and it will one day return there.”

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has say that way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

“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 dream, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with Eternity.”

“It is said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it.”

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him.”

“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.”

“When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”

“Your eyes show the strength of your soul”

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

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”