The Alchemist
By Paulo Coelho
This masterpiece by Paulo Coelho has been influential in tens of millions of lives. I have recommended and gifted this book to numerous students and friends as they strike out on their personal journeys. Using the story of a shepherd, Paulo inspires us to listen to our heart - following its urges to begin discovering our destiny which is there to be found if we can only get past our fears. It is a quick read and one that is impactful. Enjoy!
A few of my favorite excerpts…
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“It’s this: 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.”
I’m like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.
When someone makes a 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.
People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.
My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer, the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.
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.
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
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.