The Alchemist

Theme:

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, explores the theme of love, the universe conspires, perseverance, gratitude, hope, personal legend, dreams, and life.

Summary:

An Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. He is both a simple sheep herder and an ambitious explorer. He follows his dreams, literally, a well as “signs” from his environment.

Famous Quotes:

“To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only real obligation.”

“When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

“Life really is generous to those who pursue their Personal Legend.”

About Love:

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.”

“Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

“This is what we call love. 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.”

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say. That way, you’ll never have to fear an unanticipated blow.”

“Maktub. If I am really a part of your dream, you’ll come back one day.”

“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.”

“So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.”

“The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes. That’s the way it will be with our love for each other.”

“And when two such people encounter each other, and their eyes meet, the past and the future become unimportant. There is only that moment, and the incredible certainty that everything under the sun has been written by one hand only. It is the hand that evokes love, and creates a twin soul for every person in the world. Without such love, one’s dreams would have no meaning.”

“Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him.”

About Dreams:

“It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…”

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

“Dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand.”

“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”

“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don’t deserve them, or that they’ll be unable to achieve them. We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren’t, or of treasures that might have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.”

“Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we’ve learned as we’ve moved toward that dream. That’s the point at which most people give up. It’s the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one ‘dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.’”

About Life:

“Don’t give in to your fears… If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

“The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.”

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

“Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity.”

“No matter what he does, every person on earth plays a central role in the history of the world. And normally he doesn’t know it.”

“Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.”

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”

“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.”

“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”

“If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.”

“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”

“When you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.”

“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.”

“It said that all people who are happy have God within them.”

“There is only one way to learn… It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.”