1. The Alchemist online pdf
To download now please click the link below.
http://amzn.to/175O3iy
Overview
PAULO COELHO'S enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the
world. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about
an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in
Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along
the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an
2. alchemist, all of whom points Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows
what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along
the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a
discovery of the treasure found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the
story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transformation power of our
dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts
Reviews
This book is very inspiring and what I really need right now to motivate myself
with my everyday endeavors. In the end the boy in the story who was searching
for his treasure, despite the long travels and experiences, find his treasure not in
the place where he suspected it to be, but in the place where he came from. It's
just pretty ironic that what have you looking for is in the end is just beside you
right from the beginning. It's just that what he learned and discovered from his
travel is another treasure that he should realize in order to appreciate himself and
the things around him.
A very inspiring and positive book, it actually gives me hope that the things that I
aspire for will in the end I would achieve if only I strive hard and don't lose hope
until I get it. Sometimes the detours and the problems that we face now were
later on in our life will make sense and when you remember that moment
especially if you had overcome it you will know that you are thankful for that to
happen because in the end you would learn something from it
There are too many things one can learn from “The Alchemist”. Its all about
following your dream and about taking the risk of following your dreams, which is
actually so difficult to do and there are very few people in this world who actually
do, I mean risk it all, just to follow your heart and your dream. Beauty is, the
author is so right in saying that when u decide to follow your dreams the entire
universe conspires in your favour which he called as the “beginners luck” and we
all have been witness to this beginners luck at one or other point in our lives. Also,
he talks about a stage in our journey towards realizing our dreams, where
everything just goes haywire and there is everything working against us and it
almost takes us to the brink of abandoning everything and just getting back to
what was so familiar and comfortable (i.e. our usual daily life which we get used
to) this is actually the time when we are being tested for one last time and it
means also that we are really close to our objective. The example given was really
great and yes nothing new but we forget simple things in our life like "the darkest
hour of the night is just before the dawn". It is actually true that so many of us
3. just leave the struggle when it gets really tough and the chips are really low,
whereas actually we were so close to the objective, if only we would have had a
little more patience we would have been there. In one of the episodes he talks
about death, yes the fact we always forget, the only reality about our life, it is a
constant which is not going to change rest everything is uncertain. There are a lot
of us who either think that it happens to others and then there are others, who are
so busy running after the materials that they don’t have time to think about
anything, leave alone death. Yes, and those who do think about death, mostly fear
it, some fear death because of the physical pain attached to it (such people
actually fear the pain rather than the death, I am one of them) and there are
some who think they do not want to die because its not time yet for them to go.
Ironically but true, this decision about timings has thankfully not been left to us.
So, how do we get over the fear of death or make it our friend, a companion? And
not waste our beautiful life worrying about dying all the time. One of the possible
solutions lies in this book, it reads "if i have to fight, it will be just as good a day to
die as any other". Yes very much right, one would never know when he or she
wakes up in the morning that if it was the last day of his or her life and in fact,
that day would not be any different from all the other days already spent. So, why
not take everyday as the last day of our lives and live it up. Frankly speaking i
really know what i am talking about, because I am in a profession which involves a
lot of risk and death doesn’t have to look for reasons, it can just spring up from
any bush in form of a small little piece of metal called a bullet coming out of the
darkness of the night or just a deafening sound from under a culvert that I cross
everyday. Here, everyday can be the last day of my life, every meal can be my
last, every call to my wife can be the last time I would hear her sweet and loving
voice and the kids… Anyways, so what I personally follow is, everyday when I
wake up or every time when I move out on an operation, I say to myself "what a
beautiful day to die" and there on, I just do what I have to and what I have been
taught in all these years in the army and go through all the motions and
concentrate on the job at hand rather than worrying about my death and I am
really at peace with the fear of death. Another beautiful thought which I came
across about death was in the novel by the author called "Confessions of a
pilgrim". I derived from it that death can be visualized as a beautiful person who is
always sitting besides us, so close to us that it travels with us wherever we go and
it also accompanies us to our bed. Its a beautiful companion, a faithful companion,
the only one who will never be unfaithful to us, rest all the companions are just
lesser mortals and have been unfaithful at one point or other. Death always stays
with us and actually speaking that’s the only companion who would accompany us
all through our lives right from the moment we acquired some shape in our
mother’s womb to the moment when we would get the vision of that white light
and that feeling of lightness when we would finally leave this body also sometimes
expressed as "VASTRA" (clothes) in the Indian mythology. As per the Indian
4. mythology, the soul never dies, it is indestructible, it only changes a body just like
we change clothes. Our soul is a part of God and it goes back to him. We can find
the mention of the mighty soul of ours around the last portion of 'The Alchemist'
where the shepherd realizes that ultimately it his own soul which is the “hand that
wrote all” and his own soul was the part of soul of God. I firmly believe that there
is no fiction involved in this story of the shepherd, but this is a true expression of
mysteries and realities of our life, which we never pause to discover. There is
massage that this book wants to convey to us!!! I have never been into writing
anything ever in my life, yes not even a personal dairy, but since the time I
actually started writing which was just a month back, I realized that if we just
write our thoughts as they occur, the resultant has a touch of mystery, because
what we wrote with all our heart and soul, sometimes tends to surprise us. We
tend to learn from what we ourselves wrote. We never realized that we had so
much inside us and we don’t know from where, it all came. “The hand that wrote
all”, yes I think its our soul that speaks out, the soul we never recognized, the one
we never knew, the one which is part of soul of God…. …All religions have over all
the years have preached a man “Know thyself, you will find God”, “look within
yourself u will find all the answers”, these words are so common but how many of
us actually are ready to pause and give it a try. It may sound crazy, may be the
book has a effect that may appear really crazy but I am sure there are some
people who would identify with me. May be when Paulo Coelho wrote this book his
soul was revealing itself and that’s why some of us can identify with it because our
souls are the part of same soul of God, just like his is. May be these lines of his
novel were written by the “Hand that wrote all……………”
This book is one of my all time favourites but judging by the fact that there are 65
million copies in print, I can safely say I'm probably not alone in that either.
The Alchemist, if you're not familiar with the work (gasp! horror!), is a grown-up
fable that at its very heart is a story about a man, the woman he loves and
following your destiny. Anyone who has ever had a dream can find inspiration
within the pages of this novel, and, as the novel so poignantly points out, each
one of us has a dream or a personal legend to fulfill. I think one of my favourite
lines is what the Old King says to the boy on their first meeting:
“When you’re following your personal legend, all of the universe conspires to help
you achieve it."
5. Every credit should be given to the translator who managed to convey the simple
beauty of Coelho’s writing which is one of the reasons the book works so well. This
is just one of the best feel good books out there, perfect in its simplicity yet
complex in its spirituality. Because it borrows parts form Egyptian Mythology, the
Bible and the Qu'ran, it has the ability to touch the hearts of a diverse population
of people.
An interesting fact about The Alchemist, it was listed as one of the five most
frequently stolen books from Melbourne bookstores. Life has such an amusing
sense of irony!
Read this book if: No ifs on this one. If you're one of the small few who haven't
been lucky enough to read The Alchemist, then do yourself a favour and just read
it.
A few words of wisdom taken from this unpretentious book on life's possibilities -
"-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."
"...when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve
it."
"His way is not the same as mine, nor mine as his. But we're both in search of our
destinies, and I respect him for that."
"Because people become fascinated with pictures and words, and wind up
forgetting the Language of the World."
"The day after we met, Fatima said, you told me that you loved me. Then, you
taught me something of the universal language and the Soul of the World.
Because of that, I have become a part of you."
6. "How do I guess the future? Based on the omens of the present. The secret is here
in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And,
if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget the
future, and live each day according to the teachings, confident that God loves his
children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity."
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than suffering itself. 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."
"Don't give into your fears, said the alchemist, in a strangely gentle voice, If you
do, you won't be able to talk to your heart."
"If a person is living out his destiny, he knows everything he needs to know. There
is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: fear of failure."
"Love is the force that transforms and improves the Soul of the World."
I really loved this book! I need to go back and re-read it very soon, so that I can
mark all of the nuggets of wisdom that stood out to me.
The book wasn't really outwardly religious, but reading it as a religious person, I
still felt that so much of the wisdom contained in the book was right on. You just
have to substitute "the Universe" with God, and the universal language with the
Spirit perhaps. Read it like a parable...there is much to be gleaned from this book.
Some of the things I learned (or re-learned) from off the top of my head:
Live in the present, but strive to understand how the present is helping you to
follow your dreams (or personal legend, as it were).
7. When you are on the right path, all of your experiences will somehow come
together and help you achieve your goals. I have to say I have definitely found
this to be true in my life, so this did resonate with me. I don't know that I agree
that we only have ONE personal legend: I think it applies to any goal we may have
that happens to be right for us. Not all of our goals/hopes/dreams will be
realized...perhaps because it really wasn't God's plan for us, or maybe because we
didn't do what it took to realize that dream.
Do not settle. If, in working towards your goal, you come to a moment where you
are stopped, or where things seem like they're okay...that life wouldn't be so
horrible if you just decided to stay in that situation...don't! Look at the experience
as a stepping stone toward your goal, but don't stop pursuing it. (Santiago feeling
like maybe he should just stay and work in the crystal shop, or marry Fatima in
the desert.) This in particular really resonated with me because of the situation my
husband and I are in. It is a stepping stone along the way in his career. In many
ways it would be easy to give up right now and just stay where we are. It would
be a good enough life. But, his (and by default, mine) full happiness really hasn't
been achieved...at least not career-wise. Therefore we need to keep pressing
forward--still learning from the experiences we're currently having--toward the
end goal.
Finally, many of the reviews I read about this book struggled with the actions of
Fatima. That it didn't seem right that, just because she is a woman, her personal
legend should be to wait for Santiago's return and blow kisses to him as he
pursued his own dreams.
I didn't feel this way. I honestly related with her, because some of my dreams are
on hold right now while I wait for Joel to achieve his goals. And that has become
my main goal: to help him. And I am totally okay with that. I will have a chance
later to pursue some of those things that are on hold. Meanwhile, I am doing other
things...pursuing some of my less important dreams, maybe. Also, I feel that
raising my children is my ultimate personal legend, and of course I am on that
path now, and that certainly isn't on hold.
Anyway...wonderful book. One that makes you really think and learn. I absolutely
enjoyed it.
8. This book came to me from my "spiritual soulmate" Peter, whom I was madly in
love with all through the summer of '04. I sat in the coffee shop where he worked
one lazy Sunday afternoon, in an overstuffed chair with sunlight filtering in
through those awesome gothic windows and drank each word of this book into my
soul.
If you are looking for a nice meaty book filled with twists, turns and life-like
characters - this is NOT your book. Wait until you are more in a more introspective
mood. Coelho's prose is simplistic and at times childish. And the read is easy - I
finished in around an hour and a half I suppose. But the meanings left scattered
throughout the chapters are intense and authentic. Omens and signs - all around
us, the universe directing us and helping us, wanting us to succeed. All we have to
do is be aware - to listen.
I have a leather bound journal filled with nothing but quotes, sayings, important
sentences scrapped from here or there. In it, there are a couple wise words from
my friend Peter because he was a deep, old soul. But overwhelmingly some of my
favorite gems in that little book come from Coelho's Alchemist. He is a master at
speaking to the soul. Here are two of my favorites:
"One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving."
"People become facinated with pictures and words, and wind up forgetting the
Language of the World."
A deep, deep novel if you read it with your spiritual mind. Too simplistic if you are
reading it for entertainment.
Yup, I've got to place myself on the side of people who loved this book. I can see
why it has lasting appeal; it's both comforting and inspiring. The story of Santiago,
the shepherd boy who goes in search of his Personal Legend, reads like a fairy
tale, a quest story with magical elements but many, many layers of wisdom. I'm a
sucker for that kind of book!
9. There were many favorite quotes, but I especially like Coelho's introduction to the
10th anniversary edition, which sums up the ideas behind the story quite well.
Interestingly, both a friend my age and a middle schooler who is failing Language
Arts both told me to read this in the same week. So I paid attention.
To download now please click the link below.
http://amzn.to/175O3iy
