13 Paulo Coelho Quotes on Following Your Dreams

1) “‘But what if I can’t?’
‘Then you’ll die in the midst of trying to realize your destiny. That’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their destinies were.’”

2) “‘Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?’
‘Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.’”

3) “He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: 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.”

4) “‘And what went wrong when other alchemists tried to make gold and were unable to do so?’
‘They were looking only for gold. They were seeking the treasure of their destiny, without wanting actually to live out the destiny.’”

5) “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.”

6) “And anyone who interferes with the destiny of another thing never will discover his own.”

7) “My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer.’
‘Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering it self. 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.’”

8) “Don’t give in to your fears. If you do, you won’t be able to talk to your heart.”

9) “It’s true; life really is generous to those who pursue their destiny.”

10) “…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.”

11) “To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I’m beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I’m happy at least that I didn’t wait twenty years.”

12) “‘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 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 out, indeed, to be a threatening place.”

13) “The boy told himself that, on the way toward realizing his own destiny, he had learned all he needed to know, and had experienced everything he might have dreamed of.”