“hmmm… “ said the old man, looking at all sides of the book as if it were some strange object. “this is an important book, but it's really irritating”.
“It's a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people's inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world's greatest lie.”
“What's the world's greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.
“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. That's the world's greatest lie.”
P 18
…he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure.
P 42
The boy was beginning to understand that 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 there.
P 74
“Once you get to the desert, There's no going back”, said the camel driver. “and, when you can't go back, you have to worry only about the best way of moving forward.”
p 77
“Isn't wine prohibited here?” the boy asked.
“It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil”, said the alchemist. “It's what comes out of their mouths that is.”
P 115
“what if I decide to stay?”
“Let me tell you what will happen. You'll be the counselor of the Oasis. You have enough gold to buy many sheep and many camels. You'll marry Fatima, and you'll both be happy for a year. You'll learn to love the desert, and you'll get to know everyone one of the fifty thousand palms. You'll watch them as they grow, demonstrating how the world is always changing. And you'll get better and better at understanding omens, because the desert is the best teacher there is.
Sometime during the second year, you'll remember about the treasure. The omens will begin insistently to speak of it, and you'll try to ignore them. You'll use your knowledge for the welfare of the oasis and its inhabitants. The tribal chieftains will appreciate what you do. And your camels will bring you wealth and power.
During the third year, the omens will continue to speak of your treasure and your Personal Legend. You'll walk around, night after night, at the oasis, and Fatima will be unhappy because he'll feel it was she who interrupted your quest. But you will love her, and she'll return your love. You'll remember that she never asked you to stay, because a woman of the desert knows that she must await her man. So you won't blame her. But many times you'll walk the sands of the desert, thinking about hat maybe you could have left… that you could have trusted more in your love for Fatima. Because what kept you at the oasis was your own fear that you might never come back. At that point, the omens will tell you that your treasure is buried forever.
Then, sometime during the fourth year, the omens will abandon you, because you've stopped listening to them. The tribal chieftains will see that, and you'll be dismissed from your position as counselor. But, by then, you'll be a rich merchant, with many camels and a great deal of merchandise. You'll spend the rest of your days knowing that you didn't pursue your Personal Legend, and that now it's too late.”
P 120
…one afternoon, his heart told him that it was happy. “Even though I complain sometimes”, it said, “it's because I'm the heart of a person, and people's hearts are that way. 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. Because, when these things happen, we suffer terribly.”
“ My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer,” the boy told the alchemist one night at they looked up at the moonless sky.
“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”.
“every second of the search is an encounter with God,” the boy told his heart. “when I have been truly searching for my treasure, every day has been luminous, because I've known that every hour was a part of the dream that I would find it. 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.”
So, his heart was quite for an entire afternoon. That night, the boy slept deeply, and when we awoke, his heart began to tell him things that came from the Soul of the World. It said that all people who are happy have God within them. And that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert, as the alchemist had said. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years to create it. “Everyone on earth has a treasure that awaits him”, his heart said. “We, people's hearts, seldom say much 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 it's own direction, toward it's own fate. But, unfortunately, very few follow the path laid out for them – the path to their Personal Legends, and to happiness. Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place.
“So we, their hearts, speak more and more softly. We never stop speaking out, but we begin to hope a\that our words won't be heard; we don't want people to suffer because they don't follow their hearts.”
“Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist.
“Because that's what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer.”
P 131
“Don't give in to your fears”, said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. “If you do, you wont be able to talk to your heart.”
“If a person is living out his Personal Legend, he knows everything he needs to know. There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve; the fear of failure.”
p 141
