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Bookish Mardi: Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist
"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Paulo Coelho
While sleeping near a sycamore tree in the sacristy of an abandoned church, Santiago, a shepherd boy, has a recurring dream about a child who tells him that he will find a hidden treasure if he travels to the Egyptian pyramids. An old woman tells Santiago that this dream is prophetic and that he must follow its instructions. Santiago is uncertain, however, since he enjoys the life of a shepherd.
Next Santiago meets a mysterious old man who seems able to read his mind. This man introduces himself as Melchizedek, or the King of Salem. He tells Santiago about good and bad omens and says that it is the shepherd boy's duty to pursue his Personal Legend. Melchizedek then gives Santiago two stones, Urim and Thummim, with which to interpret omens.
Santiago wavers briefly before selling his flock and purchasing a ticket to Tangier, in northern Africa, to which he travels by boat. Shortly after he arrives there, a thief steals all of Santiago's money, so the shepherd boy decides to look for a way to make enough money to return home. He finds work in the shop of a crystal merchant, where Santiago makes improvements that reap considerable financial rewards.
After eleven months of working in the shop, Santiago is unsure of how to proceed. Should he return to Andalusia a rich man and buy more sheep? Or should he cross the vast Sahara in pursuit of the hidden treasure of his dreams? He joins a caravan traveling to Egypt.
Santiago meets an Englishman who wants to learn the secret of alchemy, or turning any metal into gold, from a famous alchemist who lives at an oasis on the way to the pyramids. While traveling, Santiago begins listening to the desert and discovering the Soul of the World. The caravan eventually reaches the oasis, and there Santiago meets an Arab girl named Fatima and falls in love with her instantly. The caravan leader gathers the travelers together and tells them that tribal warfare prevents them from continuing their journey.
Santiago wanders from the oasis into the desert and, seeing two hawks fighting in the sky, has a vision of an army entering the oasis. Because attacking an oasis is a violation of the rules of the desert, Santiago shares his vision with the oasis's tribal chieftain. Soon afterward, Santiago is confronted by a black-garbed, veiled stranger with a sword, who sits atop a white horse. It is the alchemist. The tribal chieftain arms his men, and they are well-prepared when the oasis is indeed invaded. The alchemist offers to cross the desert with Santiago.
Soon the two men enter into an area of intense tribal warfare. Warriors hold the two men captive, but eventually allow them to continue their journey. The alchemist tells Santiago that he needs to return to the oasis, and that the rest of the trip is Santiago's to make alone so that he can claim his Personal Legend.
Santiago arrives at the Egyptian pyramids and begins to dig. He finds nothing buried in the ground. Thieves beat Santiago and rob him of his money. After he tells them of his dream, though, one of the thieves recounts his own dream about a buried treasure in the sacristy of an abandoned church.
Returning to Andalusia, Santiago goes back to the church where he dreamed of the treasure near the pyramids. He digs where he slept, beneath a sycamore tree, and there it is: Santiago's treasure.
Remarkable Lines from the Book
". . . shepherds, like seamen and like travelling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering." - Santiago
"We have to be prepared for change." - Santiago
"The world was huge and inexhaustible." - Santiago
"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting." - Santiago
". . .dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it's only you who can understand." - Dream Interpreter in Tarifa
"It's the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only the wise men are able to understand them." - Dream Interpreter in Tarifa
"When someone sees the same people everyday. . . they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change.If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry." - Santiago
"Everyone seems to have the idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own." - Santiago
. . .a very profound conversation I happen to contemplate from the book:
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Old Man: It's a book that says says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say. It describes people's inability to choose their own destinies. And ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie.
Santiago:What's the world's greatest lie?
Old Man: It's this: that at certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That't the world's greatest lie.
"No one can be from many places." - Santiago
"People say strange things." - Santiago
". . . the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your own destiny." - Old Man
". . . there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because the desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth." - Old Man
"The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation. All things are one." - Old Man
"When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Old Man
". . .people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of." - Old Man
"In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own destinies." - Old Man
"people learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being. Maybe that's why they give up on it so early, too. But that's what the way it is." - Old Man
"Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents." - Old Man
"If you start by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it." - Old Man
". . . everything in life has its own price." - Old Man
"Sometimes it's better to leave things as they are." - santiago
". . . he has to choose between something he had accustomed to and something he wanted to have." - Paulo Coelho
". . .every day was the same, and when each day is the same with the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day the sun rises."
"That's the way it always is. It's called the principle of favorability. When you play cars the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner's luck." - Old Man
". . .there's a force that wants you to realize your destiny; it whets your appetite with a taste of success." - Old Man
"God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you." - Old Man
"You can not trust a man if you don't know his house." - Wise Man
"The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world." - Wise Man
"I'm like everyone else - I see the worlds in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does." - Santiago
"Learn to recognize omens, and follow them." - Old King
". . .there were certain things one shouldn't ask about, so as not to flee from one's own destiny." - Santiago
"There must be a language that doesn't depend on words." - Santiago
"If I can understand this language, I can understand the world." - Santiago
". . . beauty is the great seducer." - Merchant
". . . every blessing ignored becomes a curse." - Merchant
"Never stop dreaming." - Old King
". . .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." - Santiago
". . . making a decision was only the beginning of things. 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." - Santiago
"Everything in life is an omen." - Englishman
"There is no such thing as coincidence." - Englishman
"The closer one gets to realizing his destiny, the more that destiny becomes his true reason for being." - Santiago
". . . the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel so small." - Santiago
"Creatures like the sheep, that are used to traveling, know about moving on." - Santiago
". . .intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it's all written here." - Santiago
"We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when w understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand." - Santiago
"When you want something with all your heart, that't when you are closest to the Soul of the World." -
"Everything on earth is being continuously transformed, because the earth is alive. . . and it has a soul. We are part of that soul, so we rarely recognize that it is working for us."
"A small sliver of the stone can transform large qualities of metal into gold." - Englishman
. . . another thought-provoking conversation ^^
Santiago: Why do they make things so complicated?
Englishman: So that those who have responsibility for understanding can understand. Imagine if everyone went around transforming lead into gold. Gold would lose its value.
"I learned that the world has a soul, and that whoever can understand that soul can understand the language of things." - Englishman
"Everyone has his or her own way of learning." - Santiago
"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 right now."
"The world speaks many languages." - Santiago
"Don't be impatient. Eat when it's time to eat. And move along when it's time to move along." - Camel Driver
". . . 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. Something older than humanity, more ancient than the desert." - Santiago
"Love required them to stay with the people they love."
"When you are in love, things make even more sense." - Santiago
"If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise." - The seer
"I want to know about the future because I'm a man. And men always live their lives based on the future." - Camel Driver
"How do I guess at the future? Based on the omens of the present. The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improves on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day , in itself, brings with it an eternity." - Santiago
"All of us know that whoever believes in dreams also knows how to interpret them." - Old Man
"Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World." - A Stranger
"It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil. It's what comes out of their mouth that is." - The Alchemist
"Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure." - The Alchemist
"Life attracts life." - The Alchemist
"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 Alchemist
"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving." - Santiago
Santiago to Fatima : "I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you."
"there is only one way to learn. It's through action. Everything you need know you have learned through your journey." - The Alchemist
"Their were seeking the treasure of their destiny, without wanting actually to live out the destiny." - The Alchemist
"I'm an alchemist simply because I'm an alchemist." - The Alchemist
"The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect." - The Alchemist
"God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom." - The Alchemist
"Listen to your heart. It knows all things." - The Alchemist
"Wherever you heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure." - The Alchemist
". . . in pursuing your dream, you might lose everything you've won." - The Alchemist
"Treason is a blow that comes unexpectedly. If you know your heart well, it will never be able to do that to you. because you'll know its dreams and wishes, and will know how to deal with them." - The Alchemist
"You will never be able to escape from your heart. So better listen to what it has to say." - The Alchemist
"People are afraid to pursue their dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them or that they'll be unable to achieve them." - Santiago
"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer." - Santiago
". . . 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." - The Alchemist
"When I have been truly searching for my treasure, I've discovered things along the way that I never would have seen had I not had the courage to try things that seemed impossible for a shepherd to achieve." - Santiago
"Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him. We people's heart seldom say about those treasures because people no longer want to go in search of them. We speak of them only to children. Later, we simply let life proceed, in its own direction, toward its own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them - the path to their destinies, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns our to be a threatening place." - The Alchemist
Santiago: Why don't people's heart tell them to continue to follow their dreams?
The Alchemist: Because that what makes a heart suffer the most, and hearts don't like to suffer.
"What you still need to know is this: 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 say in the language of a desert, one dies in thirst when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon.'' - The Alchemist
"Every search begins with a beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested." - The Alchemist
". . . the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn." - Santiago
"When you possess great treasure within you, and try to tell others of them, seldom are you believed." - The Alchemist
". . . the heart does what it can." - The Alchemist
"No one fails to suffer the consequences of everything under the sun." - The Alchemist
"Your eyes show the strength of your soul." - The Alchemist
"Everything in the universe evolved." - The Alchemist
"Men have never understood the words of the wise. So gold, instead of being seen as a symbol of evolution, became the basis of conflict." - The Alchemist
". . . anyone who interferes with the destiny of another thing never will discover his own." - The Alchemist
"If a person is living out his destiny, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure." -The Alchemist
"Usually the threat of death makes people a lot more aware of their live." -The Alchemist
"Death doesn't change anything." - Santiago
"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." - Santiago
". . .everything has its own destiny, but one day that destiny will be realized. So each thing has to transform itself into something better, and to acquire a new destiny." - Santiago
". . . when we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better,too." - The Alchemist
". . . when we love, we always strive to become better than we are." - The Alchemist
"Everything happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time." - Superstitious Arab
". . .life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny." -Santiago
All photos are from web ^^
