The Pilgrimage

Paulo Coelho, 1987

The path to knowledge is a path that’s open to everyone, to the common people.

(Knowledge) can be discovered by anyone who is willing to seek them out, with patience and perspicacity, among lessons that life itself teaches us.

When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations.

When you are moving toward an objective, it is very important to pay attention to the road. It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length.

The same thing when you have an objective in life. It will turn out to be better or worse depending on the route you choose to reach it and the way you negotiate that route.

Time isn’t something that always proceeds at the same pace. It is we who determine how fast time passes.

Try to find pleasure in a speed that you’re not used to. Changing the way you do routine things allow a new person to grow inside of you. You’re the one who must decide how you handle it.

Dreams provide nourishment for the soul, just as a meal does for the body. Many times in our lives we see our dreams shattered and our desires frustrated, but we have to continue dreaming. If we don’t our soul dies.

The good fight is the one that’s fought in the name of our dreams. When we’re young and our dreams first explode inside us with all of their force, we are very courageous, but we haven’t yet learned how to fight. With great effort, we learn how to fight, but by then we no longer have the courage to go into combat. So we turn against ourselves and do battle within. We become our worst enemy. We say that our dreams were childish, or too difficult to realize, or the result of our not having known enough about life. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to fight the good fight.

The first symptom of the process of killing our dreams is the lack of time. The busiest people always have time enough to do everything. Those who do nothing are always tired and pay no attention to the little amount of work they are required to do.

The second symptom of the death of our dreams lies in our certainties. We begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life.

The third symptom of the passing of our dreams is peace. We cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. We think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek for personal and professional achievements.

When we renounce our dreams and find peace, we go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and to infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves.

We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.

No man is an island, we need help, we need friends and when the friends aren’t nearby, we have to turn solitude into our main weapon. We need the help of everything around us in order to take the necessary steps toward our goal. Everything has to be a personal manifestation of our will. If we don’t understand that, we become arrogant warriors. And our arrogance will defeat us in the end, because we will be so sure of ourselves that we won’t see the pitfalls there on the field of battle.

People don’t like to ask too much of life because they are afraid they will be defeated. But if someone wants to fight the good fight, the person must view the world as if it were a marvelous treasure waiting to be discovered and won.

Conversation is useful when people want to convince themselves that what they’re saying is right.

We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our own explanation of the universe. We think that the more people there are who believe as we do, the more certain it will be that what we believe is the truth. But it doesn’t work that way at all.

Fans who lack the faith can make a team lose a game it is already winning.

A manifestation of eros, the feeling of love that exists between two people.

What god had provided to humans as their noblest sentiment would become a source of hatred and destructiveness.

No one can escape eros. Everyone needs its prescence, despite the fact that many times, eros makes us feel apart from the world, trapped in our solitude.

Philos is love in the form of friendship. When the flame of eros stops burning, it is philos that keeps a couple together.

Do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life.

I don’t think you look to love as a means to a comfortable retirement.

Enthusiasm is agape directed at a particular idea or a specific thing. When  we love and believe from the bottom of our heart, we feel ourselves to be stronger than anyone in the world, and we feel a serenity that is based on the certainty that nothing can shake our faith.

Enthusiasm carries us toward our goal.

We lose our enthusiasm because of the small and unavoidable defeats we suffer during the good fight. We let it dribble through our fingers; we do this without recognizing that we are letting the true meaning of our lives escapes us. We blame the world for our boredom and for our losses, and we forget that it was we ourselves who allowed this enchanting power to diminish.

Don’t be cruel with yourself. Be kind, accept the praise that you deserve.

Don’t start creating fantasies in a world that is already extraordinary.

A threat leads to nothing if it is not accepted.

Both attacking and fleeing are part of the fight. What isn’t part of the fight is becoming paralyzed by fear.

With an awareness of death, they would be able to be even more daring, to go much further in their daily conquests, because then they would have nothing to lose – for death is inevitable.

Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person’s life its true meaning.

(The things going on around us) were the things, rather than the stars or wisdom, that told me I was alive.

You wanted to be brave, when it was enough to have been intelligent.

Wisdom has value only if it helps us to overcome some obstacle. A hammer would make no sense in the world if there were no nails to be driven.

A disciple can never imitate his guide’s steps. Teaching is only demonstrating that it is possible. Learning is making it possible for yourself.

I had to do it all. I, alone, had to win my victory.

Every one of us has the flame of madness burning inside and it is fed by agape. Agape is grander than our ordinary human concepts, and everyone thirsts for it.

In order for agape to flourish, I must not be afraid to change my life. If I did not (like what I’m doing), there was always the time for a change. If I allowed change to occur, I would be transforming myself into a fertile field and allowing the Creative Imagination to sow its seeds in me.

The most difficult moment in a person’s life – when the person witnesses the good fight and is unable to change and join the battle. When this happens, knowledge turns against the person who holds it.

An act of will (to change), a concrete desire to do battle against everything that is unsatisfying in one’s everyday life.

The only way to make the right decision is to know what the wrong decision is. You have to examine the other path, without fear and without being morbid, and then decide.

Our enemy always represents our weaker side. Our enemy joins the battle only because he knows that he can hurt us. During the fight, we always try to protect our weak spot, so the enemy strikes at the unguarded side. And we wind up defeated because we allow what should never be allowed: we let the enemy choose how the battle will be waged.

Going to a war is not a sin, it is an act of love. The enemy develops us and sharpens us.

Our enemy is part of agape, there to test our grip, our will, and our handling of the sword. He was placed in our lives – and we in his – with a purpose.

We can always learn something from defeat; if we flee, all we do is declare that our enemy has won.

The person who does not know how to listen will never hear the advice that life offers us all the time. And only the person who listens to the sounds of the moment is able to make the right decisions.

People who consider themselves to be wise are often indecisive when command is called for and rebellious when they are called upon to obey. They are ashamed to give orders and consider it dishonorable to receive them. Don’t ever be that way.

You can learn only through teaching. Life teaches us lessons every minute, and the secret is to accept that only in our daily lives can we show ourselves to be as wise and as powerful. But we become aware of this only when we are forced to teach others and to participate in adventures.

The search for happiness is a personal search and not a model we can pass on to others.