Paulo Coelho quotes
Born
August 24, 1947 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Occupation
Novelist, writer, lyricist.
Paulo Coelho de Souza is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and the recipient of numerous international awards. He is best known for his widely translated novel The Alchemist.
When you are enthusiastic about what you do, you feel this positive energy. It’s very simple.
– Paulo Coelho
I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.
– Paulo Coelho
Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.
– Paulo Coelho
Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.
– Paulo Coelho
Remember your dreams and fight for them. You must know what you want from life. There is just one thing that makes your dream become impossible: the fear of failure.
– Paulo Coelho
Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.
– Paulo Coelho
Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.
– Paulo Coelho
I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.
– Paulo Coelho
When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream.
– Paulo Coelho
No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.
– Paulo Coelho
All women have a perception much more developed than men. So all women somehow, being repressed for so many millennia, they ended up by developing this sixth sense and contemplation and love. And this is something that we have a hard time to accept as part of our society.
– Paulo Coelho
You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it.
– Paulo Coelho
The good old days, when each idea had an owner, are gone forever.
– Paulo Coelho
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
– Paulo Coelho
The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.
– Paulo Coelho
Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering.
– Paulo Coelho
I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.
– Paulo Coelho
Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.
– Paulo Coelho
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
– Paulo Coelho
The two worst strategic mistakes to make are acting prematurely and letting an opportunity slip; to avoid this, the warrior treats each situation as if it were unique and never resorts to formulae, recipes or other people’s opinions.
– Paulo Coelho
The more violent the storm, the quicker it passes.
– Paulo Coelho
Elegance is usually confused with superficiality, fashion, lack of depth. This is a serious mistake: human beings need to have elegance in their actions and in their posture because this word is synonymous with good taste, amiability, equilibrium and harmony.
– Paulo Coelho
No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.
– Paulo Coelho
We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.
– Paulo Coelho
I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.
– Paulo Coelho
Let us be absolutely clear about one thing: we must not confuse humility with false modesty or servility.
– Paulo Coelho
The wise are wise only because they love. The fool are fools only because they think they can understand love.
– Paulo Coelho
The gigantic tension before the shooting of an arrow, and the total relaxation seconds later, is my way of connecting to the universe.
– Paulo Coelho
You’re always learning. The problem is, sometimes you stop and think you understand the world. This is not correct. The world is always moving. You never reach the point you can stop making an effort.
– Paulo Coelho
Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.
– Paulo Coelho
You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen
– Paulo Coelho
We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.
– Paulo Coelho
Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.
– Paulo Coelho
I think you can have 10,000 explanations for failure, but no good explanation for success.
– Paulo Coelho
What interests me in life is curiosity, challenges, the good fight with its victories and defeats.
– Paulo Coelho
Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
– Paulo Coelho
Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.
– Paulo Coelho
I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.
– Paulo Coelho
Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.
– Paulo Coelho
Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.
– Paulo Coelho
Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.
– Paulo Coelho
Once I found this possibility to use Twitter and Facebook and my blog to connect to my readers, I’m going to use it, to connect to them and to share thoughts that I cannot use in the book.
– Paulo Coelho
I am 100 per cent Virgo, stubborn, over-organised, slightly abstracted from the rest of the world.
– Paulo Coelho
Jesus lived a life that was full of joy and contradictions and fights, you know? If they were to paint a picture of Jesus without contradictions, the gospels would be fake, but the contradictions are a sign of authenticity.
– Paulo Coelho
It’s very difficult to read a book on your computer.
– Paulo Coelho
Everybody has a creative potential and from the moment you can express this creative potential, you can start changing the world.
– Paulo Coelho
I wanted to write when I was young, but people said it was impossible. Then my parents locked me in a mental institution – they said I was crazy and would never make a living from writing.
– Paulo Coelho
I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.
– Paulo Coelho
When you write an article about anything, trolls use the comments to attack. They feel frustrated – but haters are losers. It’s not good to feed this aspect. It’s more intelligent to be constructive.
– Paulo Coelho
I am a Catholic because I choose to be a Catholic. And then I go to the Mass because I choose. It is out of my free will.
– Paulo Coelho
With all due respect, the Mona Lisa is overrated.
– Paulo Coelho
We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.
– Paulo Coelho
I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.
– Paulo Coelho
Things do not always happen the way I would like them to happen, and I had better get used to that.
– Paulo Coelho
I never say I am a guru.
– Paulo Coelho
I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.
– Paulo Coelho
My literature is much more the result of a paradox than that of an implacable logic, typical of police novels. The paradox is the tension that exists in my soul.
– Paulo Coelho
What I can say is that all my characters are searching for their souls, because they are my mirrors. I’m someone who is constantly trying to understand my place in the world, and literature is the best way that I found in order to see myself.
– Paulo Coelho
I don’t try to control my days.
– Paulo Coelho
I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.
– Paulo Coelho
Publishing is in a kind of Jurassic age.
– Paulo Coelho
In the United States, I am a great success, but I am not a celebrity.
– Paulo Coelho