Paulo Coelho Quotes

Oh, how daily life is.

The more one lives alone on the river or in the open country, the clearer it becomes that nothing is more beautiful or great than to perform the ordinary duties of one's daily life simply and naturally.

If you want to write what the world is about, you have to write details...real life is in the dishes. Real life is pushing strollers up the street, folding T-shirts, the alarm clock going off early and you dropping into bed exhausted every night. That's real life.

A man's motive in the small actions of daily life, like resting a moment on his pitchfork in the sun and listening intently, may be the most important thing about that man.

I think some people forget sometimes I do have to go to the grocery store; I do enjoy going out to dinner. I have to get my oil changed from time to time. I do all the normal things. I cut my grass. People kind of forget that normal part, that we do a lot of the stuff that everybody else does, but we all have our talents, and mine is in football.

Our lives are largely made up of a series of mundane moments, but those little moments are often the finesse that shapes our entire existence; it's not necessarily the big, dramatic events, although they do, too, of course.

So many things go on in life that never find their way into the movies because so much of it is unappealing. But that's what I want to show.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.

In ordinary life we hardly realize that we receive a great deal more than we give, and that it is only with gratitude that life becomes rich.

Oh, how daily life is. (Ah, que la vie est quotidienne.)

Miracles happen every day. Not just in remote country villages or at holy sites halfway across the globe, but here, in our own lives.

In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life.

So much of life is in the smallness of moments...but they are harder to mark. So we need the grander celebrations and occasions. People like to feel significant.

As you grow older you will discover that the most important things that will happen to you will often come as a result of silly things, as you call them --"ordinary things" is a better expression. That is the way the world is.

Eating, sleeping, cleaning - the years no longer rise up toward heaven, they lie spread out ahead, gray and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won. Washing, ironing, sweeping, ferreting out rolls of lint from under wardrobes - all this halting of decay is also the denial of life; for time simultaneously creates and destroys, and only its negative aspect concerns the housekeeper.

Life is not all high emotion. Some of the most interesting things are when its not highly emotional: little details of relationships and body language.

Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist; that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment.

After all, it's all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and spending time with your family, and the little....like blow drying your hair, applying concealer, and cursing those magazine inserts. It all counts. It has to.

And, indeed, what little of beauty and peace is to be found in the societies of men is owing to the daily performance of small duties, not to big doings and fine talk.

We all lead more pedestrian lives than we think we do. The boiling of an egg is sometimes more important than the boiling of a love affair in the end.

Life is not a plot; it's in the details.

We think that it's the big moments that define our lives-the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really, these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed.

You may be reborn a thousand times, but you can never know the real, for only that which dies, that which comes to an end, can renew itself.

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God. My pretty Black brother was my Kingdom Come.