By Paulo Coelho

Rating:
4.5 Stars

Editors Foreword:

Santiago, a young shepherd living in the hills of Andalucia, feels that there is more to life than his humble home and his flock. One day he finds the courage to follow his dreams into distant lands, each step galvanised by the knowledge that he is following the right path: his own. The people he meets along the way, the things he sees and the wisdom he learns are life-changing.

With Paulo Coelho’s visionary blend of spirituality, magical realism and folklore, The Alchemist is a story with the power to inspire nations and change people’s lives.

Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.

Quotes and Personal Highlights

“Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you will find your treasure.”

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

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

“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.”

“If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

“If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.”

“It was the pure Language of the World. It required no explanation, just as the universe needs none as it travels through endless time. What the boy felt at that moment was that he was in the presence of the only woman in his life, and that, with no need for words, she recognized the same thing. He was more certain of it than of anything in the world. He had been told by his parents and grandparents that he must fall in love and really know a person before becoming committed. But maybe people who felt that way had never learned the universal language. Because, when you know that language, it’s easy to understand that someone in the world awaits you, whether it’s in the middle of the desert or in some great city. And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.”

“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.”

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

“People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find 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.”

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

“The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”

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

“This is what we call love. 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.”

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”

“When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.”

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

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

“Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” the boy asked.

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”