por Paulo Coelho de Souza (1947) is a Brazilian writer, winner of numerous international awards, including the Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum. He has sold more than 200 million copies worldwide and is the most successful Brazilian writer in history.
Coelho was born on August 24, 1947 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. As a teenager he already wanted to become a writer. When telling her mother about it, she replied: “My dear, your father is an engineer, a logical, reasonable man, with a very clear vision of the world. Do you really know what it means to be a writer?
At the age of 17, his introversion, opposition and rebellion to follow a traditional path led his parents to commit him to a mental institution from which he escaped three times before being released at the age of 20.
Born into a Catholic family, his parents were strict about religion and faith. Coelho later commented that «It wasn’t that they wanted to hurt me, but they didn’t know what to do… They didn’t do that to destroy me, they did it to save me.»
Coelho enrolled in law school and gave up his dream of becoming a writer. A year later, he gave up and lived life as a hippie, traveling through South America, North Africa, Mexico and Europe and began using drugs in the 1960s.
Upon his return to Brazil, Coelho worked as a composer, composing lyrics for Elis Regina, Rita Lee, and Brazilian icon Raúl Seixas. The composition with Raúl led Coelho to be associated with magic and the occult, due to the content of some songs.
When he was 38 years old, he had a spiritual awakening in Spain and wrote his first book, the pilgrim. Later, the second book of him, The Alchemistsold 35 million copies and made him famous.
Below we leave his best phrases about life, friendship, love and more, several taken from some of his most famous books: The Alchemist, The Pilgrim of Compostela, Veronika Decides to Die, The Winner Stands Alone, Brida, The Fifth Mountain, Valkyries…
Paulo Coelho’s best quotes
-Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can replace experience.
-The strongest love is the one that can show its fragility.
-If you want to be successful you have to respect a rule: never lie to yourself.
-Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing what to do is the worst kind of suffering.
-When a person really wants something, the whole universe conspires to help him realize his dream.
-No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when you look directly into their eyes.
How does light enter a person? If the door of love is open.
-One day you will wake up and there will be no more time to do the things you always wanted. Do them now.
-When you repeat a mistake, it is no longer a mistake, it is a decision.
-Love is discovered through the practice of loving and not through words.
To avoid the problems you have is to avoid the life you have to live.
-Straight roads do not make skilled drivers.
-When we strive to be better, everything around us also becomes better.
-If you want to achieve your goals, you must be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort.
-Changes only occur when we totally face everything we are used to doing.
-All the battles in life serve to teach us something, even those that we lose.
-You have to take risks. We only understand the miracle of life when we allow the unexpected to happen.
-Life was always a problem of knowing how to wait for the right moment to act.
-One is loved because one is loved. There is no necessary reason to love.
-Only two things can reveal the great secrets of life: suffering and love.
The eyes show the strength of the soul.
-You are what you think you are.
-Fight for your dreams and they will fight for you.
-If you think that the adventure is dangerous, try the routine: that one is lethal.
-Be brave. risk. Nothing can replace experience.
-Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.
-Miracles only happen if you believe in them.
-Join those who expose themselves and who are not afraid of being vulnerable.
-Sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is close.
Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to speak with your heart.
-The darkest hour of the night comes just before dawn.
-There are people who have money and people who are rich.
Always remember the effect your words have on others.
-It takes a lot of effort to free yourself from memory.
-If you want to see a rainbow, you have to learn to see the rain.
-The secret of life is to fall seven times and get up eight times.
-Life is truly generous to those who pursue their destiny.
-The enemy is just a pretext to test our strength.
-Tears are words that must be written.
-Forgive but do not forget, since they will hurt you again.
-Wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.
-Be brave enough to live differently.
-It is the possibility of making a dream come true that makes life interesting.
-Every day God gives us a moment in which it is possible to change everything that makes us unhappy.
-Keep in your memory for the rest of your days the good things that arose from the difficulties.
-The fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.
-Life always waits for some crisis to occur before it reveals itself in its most brilliant way.
-Join those who experience, risk, fall, hurt themselves and risk again.
It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary.
-When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel positive energy. It’s very simple.
-You can go blind by seeing each day as similar. Every day is different, every day brings a miracle. It is simply a matter of paying attention to that miracle.
-Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is only one thing that makes your dream impossible: the fear of failure.
-No, I have never seen an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I have seen it or not. I feel his presence around me.
-You don’t drown by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
-Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the fear itself. And no heart has suffered when going in search of his dream.
-Everything that has happened once may not happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.
-Love is a trap. When it appears we only see its lights, not its shadows.
-The more violent a storm is, the faster it passes.
-Everyone has creative potential and from the moment you can express it, you can start to change the world.
I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But with that being said, it’s worth the risk.
-We have to be humble enough to stop and understand that there is something called mystery.
-Let’s be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.
-Things do not always happen the way I would like and it is better that I get used to it.
-The more in harmony you are with yourself, the more you enjoy and the more faith you have. Faith does not disconnect you from reality, it connects you with it.
-Happiness is just another trick that our genetic system uses for the survival of the species.
-I was always a rich person because money is not related to happiness.
I am first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my teenage dream of becoming a writer, but I can’t say why.
-What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, good fights with their victories and defeats.
-I believe that illumination or revelation comes in daily life. I look for the enjoyment, the peace of the action. I would have stopped writing years ago if it was for the money.
-Writing means sharing. It is part of the human condition to want to share things, thoughts, ideas, opinions.
-Everything tells me that I am about to make the wrong decision, but making mistakes is part of life.
-No matter how you feel today, get up every morning and get ready to let your light shine.
-Don’t explain yourself. Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe you.
-Choosing a path means having to lose others.
-It is not expectations that guide us forward, it is our desire to move forward.
-Life moves quickly. It plunges us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
-Sometimes you don’t get a second chance and it’s better to accept the gifts that the world offers you.
-The ship is safer anchored in the port, but that is not the role of ships.
-It is better to live as if it were the first and last day of my life.
-When we love, we always strive to be better than we are. When we strive to be better than we are, everything around us becomes better.
-The absolutely calm is not the ocean law. The same is true of the ocean of life.
-Simple things are also the most extraordinary things and only the wise can see them.
-When someone leaves it is because someone else is about to arrive.
-A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy without reason, to always be busy with something and to know how to demand with all his will what he wants.
-Nothing in the world is completely wrong. Even a stopped watch is right twice a day.
-Love is not in others, it is within ourselves.
-Everything is allowed, unless interrupt a manifestation of love.
-Love will never separate a man from his Personal Legend.
The wise man is wise because he loves, the madman is mad because he thinks he understands love.
-Accumulating love means accumulating luck, accumulating hate means accumulating calamity.
-Whoever loves waiting for a reward is wasting time.
-This is freedom: to feel what the heart desires, regardless of the opinion of others.
Live in the present, it’s all you have.
-Never give up on a dream. Try to see the signs that lead you to it.
-When every day seems the same, it is because we have stopped perceiving the good things that appear in our lives.
-Do something instead of killing time. Because time is what is killing you.
-No matter what you do, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And he usually doesn’t know it.
-The really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies meet.
-Sometimes you have to decide between one thing you are used to and another that we would like to know.
Wisdom is knowing and transforming.
-There is a time to leave everything.
-Mistakes are a way of reacting.
-No person is capable of choosing without fear.
-There is no sin in being happy.
-We all know how to love, because we were born with that gift. Some people naturally practice it well, but most have to relearn, remember how to love.
-Since we cannot change the physics, let’s concentrate the extra energy and thus we will be able to take the first step.
-In all the languages of the world there is the same saying: eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel.
-Every morning, God shows us his…