Brida

by Paulo Coelho

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”

In order to learn, you must be humble.”

He had never told her certain things, about the women he received as part of the booty of battle, the women he met while he was traveling the world, the women who were expecting him to return one day. He hadn’t told her this because he was certain that she knew everything anyway and forgave him because he was her great love, and a great love is above the things of this world.

But there was something else he had never told her, and which she would possibly never know: that she, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life,

If you think that you won’t be able to stand a world in which living is more important than understanding, then give up magic now.

It isn’t explanations that carry us forward, it’s our desire to go on.”

“Right, from now on, whenever you want to find out about something, plunge straight in.”

Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now.

No one could make a choice without feeling afraid.

“Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong, my dear,” said her father, looking at the clock. “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

“If you say it was the ‘last’ time, it might well turn out to be the last. What you meant was ‘the most recent time I was here’.”

Sometimes, certain of God’s blessings arrive by shattering all the windows.

Judging oneself to be inferior to other people was one of the worst acts of pride he knew, because it was the most destructive way of being different.

“You concern yourself too much with other people,” he replied. “They’re a mirror of yourself.”

emotions were like wild horses and it required wisdom to be able to control them.