Happy New Year!

Honestly speaking, it took me a while to read and finish this book, unlike Coelho’s Alchemist and Aleph. Anyway, its a parable about his journey to find his sword, at first with the help of Petrus, his guide, while he practiced different exercises to self-awareness and discovery. He then realised a lot of things about himself and eventually knew what the real “purpose” of him longing to find his sword was.

Despite, my inablity to completely grasp the story, I would still have my favorite lines form the book;

“ The ship is safest when it’s in port, but that’s not what ships are built for.” – pg22

“When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, they day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don’t even understand the language the people speak. So you are like a child just out of the womb. You begin to attach much more importance to the things around you because your survival depends on them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they maybe able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were an episode you would remember for the rest of your life.”- pg 35

“ I am glad to be here,” said Petrus, “ because the work I did not finish is not important and the work I will be be able to do after I get back will be so much better.” -pg 36

“When you are moving toward an objective,” said Petrus, “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. You can compare it to a sexual relationship: the caresses of foreplay determine the intensity of the orgasm. Everyone knows that.” – pg 41

Symptoms that we are killing our dream:

“The first symptom of the process of our killing our dreams is the lack of time.” Petrus continued. “The busiest people I have known in my life 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. They complain constantly that the day is too short. The truth is, they afraid to fight the good fight.”

“The second symptom of the death of our dreams lie in our certainties. Because we don’t want to see life as a grand adventure, we begin to think of ourselves as wise and fair and correct in asking so little of life. We look beyond the walls of our day to day existence, and we hear the sound of lances breaking, we smell the dust and the sweat, and we see the great defeats and the fire in the eyes of the warriors. But we never see the delight, the immense delight in the hearts of those who are engaged in the battle. For them, neither victory nor defeat is important; what’s important is only that they are fighting the good fight.”

“And, finally, the third symptom of passing of our dreams is peace. Life becomes a sunday afternoon; we ask for nothing grand, and we cease to demand anything more than we are willing to give. In that state, we think of ourselves as being mature; we put aside the fantasies of our youth, and we seek personal and professional achievement. We are surprised when people our age say that they still want this or that out of life. But really, deep in our hearts, we know that what has happened is that we have renounced the battle for our dreams-We have refused to fight a good fight.” -pg 57-58

“When we renounce our dreams and find peace”, He said after a while, “ go through a short period of tranquility. But the dead dreams begin to rot within us and infect our entire being. We become cruel to those around us, and then we begin to direct this cruelty against ourselves. That’s when illnesses and psychoses arise.”- pg 59

“….And the same thing happens to everyone everyday: we always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.” -pg 60

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“Well, you should. Because what happened with him is an example of mistaken behavior. We are always trying to convert people to a belief in our 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.” – pg 104

Differences of Eros, Philos and Agape (I kind of like this concept)

“Philos is the love in the form of friendship. It’s what I feel toward you and others. When the flames of eros stops burning, it is philos that keeps a couple together.” pg 112

“…All of us seek eros, and then when eros wants to turn itself into philos, we think that love is worthless. We don’t see that it is philos that leads us to the highest form of love, agape.”- pg 115

“…Agape is total love. It is the love that consumes the person who experiences it. Whoever knows and experiences agape learns that nothing else in this world is important- just love.”-pg 119

“We lose our enthusiasm because of the small and unavoidable defeats we suffer during the good fight. And since we don’t realize that enthusiasm is a major strength,a ble to help us win the ultimate victory, we let it dribble though our fingers; we do this without recognizing that we are letting the true meaning of our lives escape 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, which justifies everything, to diminish- the manifestation of agape in the form of enthusiasm.”- Pg 122

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“If I had died that morning, for example, I would have known nothing else about the rest of the Road to Santiago, about my years of study, about my family’s grief for me, or about the money hidden in my belt. I thought about a plant on my desk in Brazil. The plant would go on, as would other plants, as would the streetcars, as would the man on the corner who charges more of his vegetable than anyone else, as would the womanat the directory assistance who provides me with telephone nymbers that are not listed in the book. All these things- which would have disappeared if I had died that morning-took on an enormous importance for me- I realized that those were the things, rather than the stars or wisdom, that told me I was alive.” -pg 143-145

“I felt very sorry for myself, not only because I was about to be buried alive but also because I had been afraid to live. Why be fearful of saying no to someone or of leaving something undone when the most importatnt thing of all was to enjoy life fully?” – pg 144

“For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.’” pg 152

“This is 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.”- pg 180