The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream

by Paulo Coelho

But ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man’s sins.

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought, as he looked again at the position of the sun, and hurried his pace.

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

and 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.

The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.

“Because 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.

“Isn’t wine prohibited here?” the boy asked. “It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil,” said the alchemist. “It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.”

Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.