The Alchemist A Fable about Following Your Dream

Paulo Ceolho, (Alan R. Clarke, tr.). San Francisco, Harper Collins, 1994.

A friend advised me to read The Alchemist.  I did.  Below are some of the simple truths that struck me particularly, as I read.  I don't agree with some of them entirely, but they did cause me to think - almost always a worthwhile activity.  For further thoughts on following your dream, as well as a most engaging tale... read the book.  Thank you, my friend.

•They come in search of new things, but when they leave they are basically the same people they were when they arrived.  They climb the mountain to see the castle, and they wind up thinking that the past was better than what we have now. (9)

•It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting. (10)

•It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. (15)

•If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry.  Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. (16)

•What's the world's greatest lie?...  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. (18)

•The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness.  (23)

•If you start out by promising what you don't even have, yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it.  (25)

•...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.  (28-29)

•Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way.  (57)

•Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.  (60)

•Sometimes, there's just no way to hold back the river.  (61)

•...there was a language in the world that everyone understood,...  It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.  (64)

•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.  (71)

•If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man.  You'll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race.  Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we're living right now. (89)

•You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his destiny.  If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love... the love that speaks the Language of the World.  (126)

•One is loved because one is loved.  No reason is needed for loving.  (128)

•...the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself ... 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.  (137)

•There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve:  the fear of failure.  (149)

•Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their lives.  (149)

•...the winds know everything.  They blow across the world without a birthplace, and with no place to die.  (153)

•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.  (167)