Great Throughts Treasury

"But my heart is agitated, the boy said. It has its dreams, it gets emotional, and it?s become passionate over a woman of the desert. It asks things of me, and it keeps me from sleeping many nights, when I?m thinking about her. Well, that?s good. Your heart is alive. Keep listening to what it has to say."

"But no one can lose sight of what he desires. Even if there are moments when he believes the world and the others are stronger. The secret is this: do not surrender."

"But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyses you is fear of making a mistake. If you have made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time."

"But no one gets lost - the hand of the merciful God always lies on the heads of courageous men and women, those who dare to be different because they believe in their dreams."

"But now I knew that true love was above all that and that it would be better to die than to fail to love."

"But other people also 'invite' us to behave like victims, when they complain about the unfairness of life, for example, and ask us to agree, to offer advice, to participate. Be careful. When you join in that game you always end up losing."

"But the great wisdom of life is to realize that we can be the masters of the things that try to enslave us."

"But the greatest wisdom could be blinded by the glare of vanity."

"But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired."

"But something always went wrong, and the relationship would end precisely at the moment when she was sure that this was the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life. After a long time, she came to the conclusion that men brought only pain, frustration, suffering and a sense of time dragging."

"But 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. We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it?s our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand."

"But the boy was quiet. He was at home with the silence of the desert, and he was content just to look at the trees. He still had a long way to go to reach the Pyramids, and someday this morning would just be a memory. But this was the present moment - the party the camel driver had mentioned - and he wanted to live it as he did the lessons of his past and hid dreams of the future. Although the vision of the date palms would someday be just a memory, right now it signified shade, water, and a refuge from the war. Yesterday, the camel's groan signaled danger, and now a row of date palms could herald a miracle. The world speaks many languages, the boy thought."

"But the time did not know, all it does is cities with a sense of fatigue and aging."

"But they both agreed that it's always nice to know that your wife is desired by another man, although they wouldn't go any further than that."

"But the light knight knows that an inkling of God's alphabet, and calm winds continue to listen and talk to the stars."

"But time, as well as healing all wounds, taught me something strange too: that it's possible to love more than one person in a lifetime. I remarried. I'm very happy with my new wife, and I can't imagine living without her. This, however, doesn't mean that I have to renounce all my past experiences, as long as I'm careful not to compare my two lives. You can't measure love the way you can the length of a road or the height of a building."

"But we must never forget that the spiritual experience of love. And in love there are no rules. We can attempt to adhere to the manual, to rule his heart, to build a strategy of behavior-but they are all baloney. The heart decides, and what that decision, only the vase."

"But we must never forget that a spiritual experience is above all a practical experience of love and in love there are no rules. We can try to be guided by a manual, check the heart, have a behavioral strategy ... But that is nonsense. Who decides is the heart, and what he decides is what counts. We've all experienced that in life. Everyone, at some point, we said tearfully, I'm suffering for a love that is not worth the pe-na. We suffer because we discovered we give more than we receive. We suffer because our love is not recognized. We suffer because we fail to enforce our rules. Thoughtlessly suffer, because love is the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we are to the spiritual experience. Enlightened true, with souls lit by Love, overcame all prejudices of the time."

"But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn. We have to be prepared for change, he thought, and he was grateful for the jacket's weight and warmth. The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy."

"But ultimately there is no good reason for our suffering, for in every love lies the seed of our growth. The more we love, the closer we come to a spiritual experience. Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all the inhibitions?They have been joyful - because those who love conquer the world and have no fear of loss. True love is an act of total surrender."

"But we have two to live with our mistakes."

"By taking risks. By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love, as long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end."

"But when I met you, I saw your light and I loved you at once. And I thought that at this stage in my life, I had nothing to lose by being honest with the woman I wanted to have by my side."

"By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river -- leaves, insects, the feathers of birds -- is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget."

"But why all these questions? Because I'm in love and I'm afraid of suffering. Don't be afraid, the only way to avoid that suffering would be to refuse to love."

"But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend"

"Certainly. But take this into consideration: of every ten problems we have, nine are created by our own selves - through guilt, self-punishment, self-pity. However, from time to time a great obstacle appears in our path, which was put there by God, and which is there for a reason. The reason is: to give us the opportunity to change everything, to move forwards."

"Changes happen when we go against everything we're used to doing."

"Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing."

"Charisma -- the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves"

"Chasing a dream, it has a price. This may require us to give up our habits, that can make us through difficulties, it can lead us to disappointment, etc.. But however high the price, it is never as expensive as the price paid by those who did not live. Because this person will one day look back and hear his own heart say: I have wasted my life."

"Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now. I?m afraid of committing myself, she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none. Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pan, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes not to see the bad things in life."

"Closing The Cycle. One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill."

"Children can always teach an adult three things: happiness without cause, preoccupation with something, and find out how demanding full force [is to] what they want."

"Close some doors today. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because they lead you nowhere."

"Close cycles. Not because of pride or arrogance, but because that no longer fits your life."

"Come on, let's go. Crazy people do crazy things."

"Considering the way the world is , one happy day is almost a miracle"

"Come, bless me with your hope and stay as long as you can."

"Comparing is impoverishing our own experience. There is meaning to our suffering, if we rise above it."

"Confucius sat down to rest, and his students immediately started asking him questions. On that day, he was in a good mood and so decided to answer. Someone asked him:"

"Courtesy is Love in little things."

"Deal with the pitfalls of life in the same way that it deals with the pitfalls of the road Instead of cursing the place where it is located. First try to know why you fall?"

"Cowards, do not leave the fire inflame their hearts and all they want is to return the situation to its previous status either brave fire in all that is ancient and extinct even if the price they will pay the torment of Homeland They even surrender everything and marching forward."

"Death is our constant companion, and it is death that gives each person's life its true meaning."

"Defeat ends when we launch into another battle. Failure has no end: it is a lifetime choice."

"Creating a human to betray of God does not put in our hearts but impossible tasks - why? - Perhaps to continue the tradition."

"Death frees from the fear of dying."

"Days were not me and never will be; this is what it is."

"Defeat exists but not suffering. A true warrior knows that when he loses a battle, he is improving the skill with which he wields a sword. He will be able to fight more skilfully next time."