Paulo Coelho Quotes

We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating - lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems. Nature can show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds.

I don't have any romanticism about any part of my past. I think of it only inasmuch as it gave me pleasure or helped me grow psychologically. That is the only thing that interests me about yesterday. I don't believe in yesterday, by the way. You know I don't believe in yesterday. I am only interested in what I am doing now.

The moment I think about past letdowns or future hypotheticals, I mentally put myself on shaky ground. If I clear my mind of chatter, I can succeed, just like I did in 2006.

Many people see themselves as a problem that needs to be solved. They also habitually see the present moment as an obstacle that they need to overcome or get away from. With awareness, an inner sense of spaciousness arises that enables you to look at your own mind, which is to say the human mind, with a certain degree of detachment.

Don't be afraid and don't let the past affect your present.

The great virtue of being alone is that your mind can go its own way.

It is possible to depart from life at this moment. Have this thought in mind whenever you act, speak, or think.

Our whole energy remains blocked either in the past or in the future. When you withdraw all your energy from past and future a tremendous explosion happens.

Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink.

Do not disturb yourself by picturing your life as a whole; do not assemble in your mind the many and varied troubles which have come to you in the past and will come again in the future, but ask yourself with regard to every present difficulty: 'What is there in this that is unbearable and beyond endurance?'

A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah, what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

Definitely I know that every negative condition of the past is cleared away from my consciousness. I no longer think about it, see it, or believe in it. Nor do I believe that it has any effect whatsoever in my experience. Yesterday is not, tomorrow is not, but today, bright with hope and filled with promise, is mine. Today I live.

I don't know about you, but I don't feel that it's my vehicle that is essential. I don't know about you, but I don't feel that it's my education that is essential. I don't think what is essential about me is my house or my car or my clothes. What is essential about me? Well, I think what is essential is that I live and embrace life right now, wherever I am. I grab it in my arms! Don't spend time crying about yesterday-yesterday is over with! I forgive my past. I forgive the people who've hurt me. I don't want to spend the rest of my life blaming and pointing a finger.

I don't think in the past. I don't think in the future. You grasp the moment.

Just for today, allow yourself to embrace all that you are every moment. Know that you are a vessel of light. Allow yourself to release all doubts about your ability, the mistakes of the past, the fear of the future.

I don't think too much about the future. Not because I'm hiding my head in the sand but because I figured out that whatever the future was going to be, the thing I had to do was to quiet my mind and open my heart and do what I could to end suffering.

I often say that I don't worry about the meaning of life-I can't handle that big stuff. What concerns me is the meaning in life-day by day, hour by hour, while I'm doing whatever it is I do. What counts is not what I do, but how I think about myself while I'm doing it.

But I don't think of the future, or the past, I feast on the moment. This is the secret of happiness, but only reached now in middle age.

Looking back is a form of insanity, given that I could really never understand what everybody else was thinking. I find these days that I'm much more efficient when I just focus on what I need to do in order to move my family forward and get the focus off me.

Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether.

In the freshness of the present moment, past is gone, future is not yet born, and—if one remains in pure mindfulness and freedom—disturbing thoughts arise and go without leaving a trace. That is basic meditation.

Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

. . . Action always happens in the present, because it is an expression of the body, which can only exist in the here and now. But the mind is like a phantom that lives only in the past or future. It's only power over you is to draw your attention our of the present.

If you want to experience eternal illumination, put the past and the future out of your mind and remain within the present moment.