Anna’s Reviews > The Alchemist > Status Update

'Don't give in to your fears, said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.
'But I have no idea how to turn myself into the wind.’
‘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.’

'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.’

'My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer, the boy told the alchemist one night as 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’

'Don't be impatient,' he repeated to himself.
'It's like the camel driver said: "Eat when it's time to eat. And move along when it's time to move along.”
~~~~~
‘Well, maybe I just want to know the future so I can prepare myself for what's coming?
If good things are coming, they will be a pleasant surprise,' said the seer. If bad things are, and you know in advance, you will suffer greatly before they even occur.'

‘But that disaster taught me to understand the word of Allah: people need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.
'We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.'

‘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.’

‘He said that to himself with certainty, but he was no longer happy with his decision. He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn't really his dream.’

‘to her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, itself because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.’