Paulo Coelho - Lives Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

View all Paulo Coelho Quotes
Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don't disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms. For example, I can't see who is in the next carriage, but it contains people traveling in the same time as me, as you, as everyone. The fact that we can't speak to them or know what's going on in that other carriage is completely irrelevant. They are there. So what we call 'life' is a train with many carriages. Sometimes we're in one, sometimes we're in another, and sometimes we cross between them, when we dream or allow ourselves to be swept away by the extraordinary.

Paulo Coelho
Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life.
Tragedy always brings about radical change in our lives, a change that is associated with the same principle: loss. When faced by any loss, there's no point in trying to recover what has been; it's best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new.

Paulo Coelho
Going after a dream has a price. It may mean abandoning our habits, it may make us go through hardships, or it may lead us to disappointment, et cetera. But however costly it may be, it is never as high as the price paid by people who didn't live. Because one day they will look back and hear their own heart say: 'I wasted my life.'

Paulo Coelho
At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.

Paulo Coelho
Live the life you always wanted to live. Avoid criticizing others and concentrate on fulfilling your dreams.

Paulo Coelho
The great problem with poisoning by Bitterness was that the passions — hatred, love, despair, enthusiasm, curiosity — also ceased to manifest themselves. After a while, the embittered person felt no desire at all. They lacked the will either to live or to die, that was the problem.

Paulo Coelho
A brush with death always helps us to live our lives better.

Paulo Coelho
It's better to live cherishing a dream than face the possibilty that it might all come to nothing.

Paulo Coelho
She said she was neither happy nor unhappy, and that was why she couldn't go on. Each person knows the extent of their own suffering, or the total absence of meaning in their lives.

Paulo Coelho
Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present

Paulo Coelho
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.

Paulo Coelho
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 destiny.

Paulo Coelho
Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist; that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment.

Paulo Coelho
Once upon a time, there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. "Once upon a time" is how all the best children's stories begin, and "prostitute" is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss, let's keep that beginning.

Paulo Coelho
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. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living now.

Paulo Coelho
Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our souls, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives.

Paulo Coelho
If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.

Paulo Coelho
In order to live fully, it is necessary to be in constant movement, only then can each day be different from the last.

Paulo Coelho
Does a leaf, when it falls from the tree in winter, feel defeated by the cold? The tree says to the leaf: "That's the cycle of life. You may think you're going to die, but you live on in me. It's thanks to you that I'm alive, because I can breathe. It's also thanks to you that I have felt loved, because I was able to give shade to the weary traveller. Your sap is in my sap; we are one thing.

Paulo Coelho
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.

Paulo Coelho
People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.

Paulo Coelho
Anxiety was born in the very same moment as mankind. And since we will never be able to master it, we will have to learn to live with it—just as we have learned to live with storms.

Paulo Coelho
I learned something recently: our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. They cheer us on and are pleased by our triumphs. False friends only appear at difficult times, with their sad, supportive faces, when, in fact, our suffering is serving to console them for their miserable lives...

Paulo Coelho
To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.

Paulo Coelho
We can't choose our lives, but we can DECIDE what to do with the joys or griefs we're given.

Paulo Coelho