By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

by Paulo Coelho

He speaks all languages.

we are in the midst of the extraordinary. Miracles occur all around us, signs from God show us the way, angels plead to be heard, but we pay little attention to them because we have been taught that we must follow certain formulas and rules if we want to find God. We do not recognize that God is wherever we allow Him/Her to enter.

there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth.

The more we love we come to spiritual experience.

They have been joyful—because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender.

spiritual life is essentially to love.

To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God.

“Seek to live. Remembrance is for the old,”

Perhaps love makes us old before our time—or young, if youth has passed.

he had sprouted wings, and now he roamed the world. Meanwhile, I was simply trying to put down roots.

YOU HAVE TO take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

Every day, God gives us the sun—and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy.

I could have. What does this phrase mean?

I surprised myself—perhaps because in seeing him, I had become a child again . . .

“O mirror of the Earth Goddess,” Brida was saying, her eyes closed. “Teach us about our power and make men understand us. Rising, gleaming, waning, and reviving in the heavens, you show us the cycle of the seed and the fruit.”

“Men lived through movement, while we remained close to the womb of the Mother.

we came to understand the cycle of creation, because our bodies repeat the rhythm of the moon.”

the moon was a reflection of my womanhood.

the religion of the earth.”

life teaches us many things,”

“It taught me that we can learn, and it taught me that we can change,”

“even when it seems im...

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

We have to listen to the child we once were, the child who still exists inside us. That child understands magic moments. We can stifle its cries, but we cannot silence its voice.

The child we once were is still there. Blessed are the children, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

if we cannot learn to look at life with the innocence and the enthusiasm of childhood—it make...

Those who try to kill the soul also violate God’s law, even though their crime is less visible to others.

We must allow the child to take the reins of our lives. The child knows that each day is different from every other day.

We have to allow it to feel loved again.

suddenly life had presented me with Life.

I spend day after day with my texts and notebooks, making this superhuman effort just to purchase my own servitude,

“The wise are wise only because they love. And the foolish are foolish only because they think they can understand love,”

Lovers need to know how to lose themselves and then how to find themselves again.

love is much like a dam: if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure, and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current. For when those walls come down, then love takes over, and it no longer matters what is possible or impossible; it doesn’t even matter whether we can keep the loved one at our side. To love is to lose control.

“Some people always have to be doing battle with someone, sometimes even with themselves, battling with their own lives. So they begin to create a kind of play in their head, and they write the script based on their frustrations.”

“That’s what that fellow outside was doing. He wanted revenge for something, and he chose us to play a part. If we had accepted his restrictions, we’d be regretting it now. We would have been defeated. We would have agreed to participate in his miserable life and in his frustrations.

I’d asked God to cleanse my soul of tension and fear.

“The Virgin understands the mystery of total surrender,”

“And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it’s better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you’re fighting for.”

When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The Other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but I will never let the Other into myself again—even

“From the moment that I ousted the Other from my life, the Divine Energy began to perform its miracles.”

the universe always conspires to help the dreamer—we

The universe always helps us fight for our dreams, no matter how foolish they may be. Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.”

Love doesn’t need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise,

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.

Truth resides where there is faith!

Whenever someone follows the path to faith—sincerely follows it—he or she is able to unite with God and to perform miracles.

discovered that as I talked to myself, a wiser voice was saying things for me.”

‘channeling’ an intelligence that isn’t mine—one