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where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering.
Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
“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.”
Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. “At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.”
The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness.
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.
He was no longer a shepherd, and he had nothing, not even the money to return and start everything over. All this happened between sunrise and sunset, the boy thought. He was feeling sorry for himself, and lamenting the fact that his life could have changed so suddenly and so drastically.
But the stones had told him that the old man was still with him, and that made him feel more confident. He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one.
As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.
“I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,” he said to himself.
He realized: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.
It was as if the world had fallen silent because the boy’s soul had.
Sometimes, there’s just no way to hold back the river.
that there was a language in the world that everyone understood,
It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.
“When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it,” the old king had said.
He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. 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.
“Everything in life is an omen,” said the Englishman, now closing the journal he was reading. “There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten.
“If I could, I’d write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence.
horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.”
people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
Until then, he had considered the omens to be things of this world. Like eating or sleeping, or like seeking love or finding a job. He had never thought of them in terms of a language used by God to indicate what he should do.
the Soul of the World surged within him. When he looked into her dark eyes, and saw that her lips were poised between a laugh and silence, he learned the most important part of the language that all the world spoke—the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart. It was love.
He tried to deal with the concept of love as distinct from possession, and couldn’t separate them.
Maybe these desert birds could explain to him the meaning of love without ownership.
he was grateful to be in love. When you are in love, things make even more sense, he thought.
“If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise,” said the seer. “If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.”
“I want to know about the future because I’m a man,” the camel driver had said to the seer. “And men always live their lives based on the future.”
The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better.
Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.”
And, as the camel driver had said, to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world.
The hand with the whip pointed to the south. The boy had met the alchemist.
“It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil,” said the alchemist. “It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.”
“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”
I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”
Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
“Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested.” The boy remembered an old proverb from his country. It said that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn.
“To show you one of life’s simple lessons,” the alchemist answered. “When you possess great treasures within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed.”
No one fails to suffer the consequences of everything under the sun.”
“Men have never understood the words of the wise. So gold, instead of being seen as a symbol of evolution, became the basis for conflict.”
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
“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, and even men can turn themselves into the wind. As long as the wind helps, of course.”
that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.”
‘Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.’”
Hope not
