Quotes from Paulo Coelho

So it was in life. In order for the more substantial pieces of wood to catch fire, the kindling must burn first. In order for us to liberate the energy of our strength, our weakness must first have a chance to reveal itself. In order for us to understand the powers we carry within us and the secrets that have already been revealed, it was first necessary to allow the surface expectations, fears, appearances — to be burned away.

I'll just say that insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It's as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that's going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don't understand the language they speak there." "We've all felt that" "And all of us, one way or another, are insane.

Perhaps it's the return of Saturn. Every twenty-nine years the planet returns to the same point in the sky that it occupied at the moment of our birth.

He closed the door but he knew that, for those who seek to step beyond the threshold, the door is always open. You need only turn the knob.

We must love because we are loved by God. We must be conscious of death if we are to have a proper understanding of life. We must struggle in order to grow

One moment, you have nothing, the next, you have more than you cope with.

Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World

God will help us - said the holy man. - But first let us understand the reason for these pains. I suggest Your Majesty confesses now, for confession makes men face up to their problems, and liberates much guilt.

Basically, everything that happens in our life is our fault and ours alone. A lot of people go through the same difficulties we went through, and they react completely differently. We looked for the easiest way out: a separate reality

Life is not a holiday, but an education. And the most important lesson we can learn is how to love. How to love better.

It was so good that I can see love in everything, even in the eyes of a schizophrenic.

Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. [...] We, people hearts, seldom say much about these treasures, because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later we simple let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own path laid out for them — the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place. p.125