91 Paulo Coelho Quotes (That May Inspire You To Follow Your Dreams)

It is clear that he is very influential, whose philosophy has affected so many lives. Hopefully, the following anthology of Paulo Coelho quotes will inspire you to believe in yourself and to chase your dreams.

Paulo Coelho de Souza (born 1947) is a Brazilian lyricist and novelist and the recipient of numerous international awards. Before dedicating his life completely to literature, he worked as theatre director and actor, lyricist and journalist. In 1987 “The Alchemist” was published but the slow initial sales convinced his first publisher to drop the novel. “The Alchemist” eventually became one of the best selling Brazilian books of all time.

His 26 books have been translated in at least 59 languages and so far and he has sold over 65 million copies. Paulo Coelho is also a keen user of electronic media, having almost 30 million followers on Facebook and 15 million followers on Twitter. Apart from that, in 2014 he uploaded his personal papers online to create a virtual Paulo Coelho Foundation.

Paulo Coelho Short quotes

• We pretend to be strong because we are weak.
• The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.
• Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.
• Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.
• How much I missed, simply because I was afraid of missing it.
• You are what you believe yourself to be.
• Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
• Tears are words that need to be written.

• Collective madness is called sanity.
• Your eyes show the strength of your soul.
• To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.
• Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.

Inspiring quotes by Paulo Coelho

• Be like the fountain that overflows, not like the cistern that merely contains.
• You have two choices, to control your mind or to let your mind control you.
• The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.
• A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.
• Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.
• You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.

• Don’t allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily
• Stay mad, but behave like normal people. Run the risk of being different, but learn to do so without attracting attention.
• Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.
• 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’s Intellectual quotes

• We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation. It’s one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it’s another to think that yours is the only path.
• The two hardest tests on the spiritual road are the patience to wait for the right moment and the courage not to be disappointed with what we encounter.
• What is a teacher? I’ll tell you: it isn’t someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows.

• Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.
• No one should ever ask themselves that: why am I unhappy? The question carries within it the virus that will destroy everything. If we ask that question, it means we want to find out what makes us happy. If what makes us happy is different from what we have now, then we must either change once and for all or stay as we are, feeling even more unhappy.
• 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.
• Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.
• No one loses anyone, because no one owns anyone. That is the true experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it
• People are never satisfied. If they have a little, they want more. If they have a lot, they want still more. Once they have more, they wish they could be happy with little, but are incapable of making the slightest effort in that direction.
• 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.
• Don’t bother trying to explain your emotions. Live everything as intensely as you can and keep whatever you felt as a gift from God. The best way to destroy the bridge between the visible and invisible is by trying to explain your emotions.

Insightful quotes by Paulo Coelho

• One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
• Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.
• There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
• Forgive but do not forget, or you will be hurt again. Forgiving changes the perspectives. Forgetting loses the lesson.
• If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid.
• People want to change everything and, at the same time, want it all to remain the same.
• Life has many ways of testing a person’s will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.

• Finding one important thing in your life doesn’t mean you have to give up all the other important things.
• Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time.
• If you start by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work towards getting it.
• People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.
• Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – what is best for me.
• Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.

Paulo Coelho Optimistic quotes

• When you can’t go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.
• People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.
• Happiness is something that multiplies when it is divided.

• When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
• It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.
• 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.
• When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive.
• None of us knows what might happen even the next minute, yet still we go forward. Because we trust. Because we have Faith.
• Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.
• If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it’s the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.

Romantic quotes by Paulo Coelho

• Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.
• Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.
• Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing.
• Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.
• When you’re in love, you’re capable of learning everything and knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love is the key to understanding of all the the mysteries.

• 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.
• Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.
• In real life, love has to be possible. Even if it is not returned right away, love can only survive when the hope exists that you will be able to win over the person you desire.
• When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.
• The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility.
• If you love someone, you must be prepared to set them free.
• Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn’t what romantic songs tell us it is – love simply is.
• In love, no one can harm anyone else; we are each responsible for our own feelings and cannot blame someone else for what we feel.
• When you were in love, you were capable of learning everything and of knowing things you had never dared even to think, because love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.

Empowering quotes by Paulo Coelho

• No matter how you feel today, get up, dress up & show up.
• 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.
• Haters are confused admirers who can’t understand why everybody else likes you
• Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say yes to life?
• When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.
• I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.
• Don’t listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never taking any risks themselves, can only see other people’s failures.

• I’ve learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you’re with me, even when you’re not by my side.
• There is only one way to learn. It’s through action. Everything you need to know you have learned through your journey.
• Whenever you want to achieve something, keep your eyes open, concentrate and make sure you know exactly what it is you want. No one can hit their target with their eyes closed.

Paulo Coelho’s Poetic quotes

• Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.
• Behind the mask of ice that people wear, there beats a heart of fire.
• Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one.
• When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.
• At every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in a fairy tale and the other in the abyss.
• We must never stop dreaming. Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body.
• I’m not a body with a soul, I’m a soul that has a visible part called the body.
• When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
• If I am really a part of your dream, you’ll come back one day.

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