The Alchemist

by Paulo Coelho

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.”

The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But he had thrown it with such force that it broke the stone it fell upon, and there, embedded in the broken stone, was the most beautiful emerald in the world.

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 felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold him back except himself.

“Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.”

From then on, he would make his own decisions.

A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep.

The gods should not have desires, because they don’t have Personal Legends. But the king of Salem hoped desperately that the boy would be successful.

If God leads the sheep so well, he will also lead a man, he thought, and that made him feel better.

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.

Although the boy had developed a superstition that each time he opened the book he would learn something important, he decided it was an unnecessary burden.

“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love . . . the love that speaks the Language of the World.”

“That’s what alchemists do. They show that, when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”