📕 The Alchemist 🔮🐑🌍
A shepherd who dreams of finding treasure in Egypt. On his journey, Santiago learns the importance of following his dreams, taking risks, and believing in himself. The book shares the message that life’s true treasures are found in pursuing our own paths and listening to our hearts. Recommended for young readers, it’s a simple, inspirational story about the adventure and learning that come with chasing one’s dreams.
About the book
| Author | Paulo Coelho |
| Year of release | 1988 |
| Genre | Fiction, Classics, Fantasy, Philosophy, Novels, Spirituality, Self-Help, Literature, Adventure, Inspirational |
| Pages | 175 |
| Average WPM | 499 |
| Date Started/Finished | 27 to 28-September-2022 |
| Time took | 1.42 Hours |
Impressions
Felt the books message was very generic and the ending predictable
How I Discovered It
Farhan recommended me to read it
Who Should Read It?
I feel this is more for the younger audience as the message in the book targets them more
Actionable Takeaways
- Follow your dreams: Santiago learns that he must follow his dreams and pursue his personal legend, even when it seems impossible or unlikely.
- Take risks: He learns that he must take risks and be willing to step out of his comfort zone in order to achieve his goals.
- Believe in yourself: He learns that he must have faith in himself and his abilities in order to achieve his dreams. He learns that he has the power within him to overcome any challenge and achieve his goals.
- Find joy in the journey: Santiago learns that the journey towards achieving his dreams is ==just as important as the destination==. He learns to find joy in the present moment and to appreciate the journey itself, rather than focusing solely on the end result.
Top Quotes
“If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.”
as the camel driver had said, to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world. Everything depended on one word: “Maktub.”
“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.”
I’m an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There’s one that says, ‘Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.’”
Summary + Notes
Prologue
- I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.
Part One
-
“What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.”
-
He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.
-
“If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.”
Part Two
-
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.
-
I don’t live in either my past or my future. I’m interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you’ll be a happy man. You’ll see that there is life in the desert, that there are stars in the heavens, and that tribesmen fight because they are part of the human race. Life will be a party for you, a grand festival, because life is the moment we’re living right now.
-
..As the camel driver had said, to die tomorrow was no worse than dying on any other day. Every day was there to be lived or to mark one’s departure from this world. Everything depended on one word: “Maktub.”
-
“When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream,” said the alchemist, echoing the words of the old king.
-
“It’s not what enters men’s mouths that’s evil,” said the alchemist. “It’s what comes out of their mouths that is.”
-
“You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend. If he abandons that pursuit, it’s because it wasn’t true love . . . the love that speaks the Language of the World.”
-
“There is only one way to learn,” the alchemist answered. “It’s through action.
-
“The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect. God created the world so that, through its visible objects, men could understand his spiritual teachings and the marvels of his wisdom. That’s what I mean by action.”
-
“Why don’t people’s hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?” the boy asked the alchemist. “Because that’s what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don’t like to suffer.”
-
“You dominated those horsemen with the way you looked at them,” he said. “Your eyes show the strength of your soul,” answered the alchemist.
-
I’m an old, superstitious Arab, and I believe in our proverbs. There’s one that says, ‘Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.’”
-
But before they left, he came back to the boy and said, “You’re not going to die. You’ll live, and you’ll learn that a man shouldn’t be so stupid. Two years ago, right here on this spot, I had a recurrent dream, too. I dreamed that I should travel to the fields of Spain and look for a ruined church where shepherds and their sheep slept. In my dream, there was a sycamore growing out of the ruins of the sacristy, and I was told that, if I dug at the roots of the sycamore, I would find a hidden treasure. But I’m not so stupid as to cross an entire desert just because of a recurrent dream.”
-
The boy stood up shakily, and looked once more at the Pyramids. They seemed to laugh at him, and he laughed back, his heart bursting with joy. Because now he knew where his treasure was.