From The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho:
- Souls too, like rivulets and plants, needed a different kind of rain: hope, faith, a reason to live. When this did not come to pass, everything in that soul died, even if the body went on living...
- "Everything will happen as was written by the Lord," replied the prophet. "There are moments when tribulations occur in our lives, and we coannot avoid them. But they are there for some reason."
"What reason?"
" That is the question we cannot answer before, or even during, the trials. Only when we have overcome them do we understand why they were there."
- "What are you doing?"
"I have nothing to do," she replied.
"Then learn something. At this moment, many people have stopped living. They do not become angry, nor cry out; they merely wait for time to pass. They did not accept the challenges of life, so life no longer challenges them. You are running that same risk; react, face life, but do not stop living."
- "Fear exists until the moment when the unavoidable happens, " he told Elijah. "After that, we must waste non of our energy on it."
- "I once again felt an immense will to live. You told me to study the characters of Byblos, and I did. I thought only of pleasing you, but I came to care deeply about what I was doing, and I discovered something: the meaning of life was whatever I wanted it to be."
-"Everything that could have happened but did not is carried away with the wind and leaves no trace," said the shepherd. "Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by."
- "A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires..."
-"...sometimes it is necessary to struggle with God. Every human being at some time had tragedy enter his life; it might be the destruction of a city, the death of a son, an unproved accusation, a sickness that left one lame forever. At that moment, God challenged one to confront Him and to answer His questions: "Why dost thou cling fast to an existence so short and so filled with suffering? What is the meaning of thy struggle?"
The man who did not know how to answer this question would resign himself, while another, one who sought a meaning to existence, feeling that God had been unjust, would challenge his own destiny. It was at this moment that fire of a different type descended from the heavens - not the fire that kills but the kind that tears down ancient walls and imparts to each human being his true possibilities. Cowards never allow their hearts to blaze with this fire; all they desire for the changed situation to quickly return to what is was before, so they can go on living their lives and thinking in their customary way. The brave, however, set afire that which was old and, even at the cost of great internal suffering, abandon everything, including God, and continue onward.
"The brave are always stubborn."
