I am through with “Witch of Portobello”. Though, it is not as per my expectation like other books written by Paulo Coelho, enlighten spiritual energy thorugh so called Witch character.
Overall rating : ***
Food for thoughts from this book:
“No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people’s eyes, to reveal the marvels around.”
“No one places her dreams in the hands of those who might destroy them.”
“When reason lost the battle, and all I could do was surrender and accept that i was in love.”
“If there is any possible consolation in the tragedy of losing someone we love very much, it’s the necessary hope that perhaps it was for the best.”
“How many of us will be saved the pain of seeing the most important things in out lives disappearing from one moment to the next? I don’t just mean people, but our ideas and dreams too: we might survive a day, a week, a few years, but we’re all condemned to lose. Our body remains alive, yet, sooner or later, our soul will receive the mortal blow.”
“No one can manipulate anyone else. In any relationship, both parties know what they are doing, even if one of them complains later on that they were used.”
“It isn’t good to speak ill of people who have passed from this life onto the astral plane.”
“….She was always flirting with danger. They say extroverts are unhappier than introverts, and have to compensate for this by consatantly proving to themselves how happy and contented and at ease with life they are.”
“If man we don’t know phones us up one day and talks a little, makes no suggestions, says nothing special, but nevertheles pays us the kind of attention we rarely receive, we’re quite capable of going to bed with him that same night, feeling relatively in love. That’s what we women are like, and there’s nothing wrong with that – it’s the nature of the female to open herself to love easily.”
“Her greatest problem was that she was a woman of the twenty-second century living in the twenty-first, and making no secret of the fact either.”
“I’ve lived on a battlefield since i was born, but i’m still alive and i don’t need anyone to protect me.”
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”
“I am only happy when i think that God exists and is listening to me; but that isn’t enough to go on living, when nothing seems to make sense. I pretend a happiness i don’t feel; I hide my sadness so as not to worry those who love me and care about me.”
” If i don’t feel life growing inside me, I’ll never be able to accept life outside me.”
“My real family left forever. And the family i’d been born into received me with open arms.”
“When the pain abated – and time is the only cure for that.”
” You can’t measure love the way you can the length of a road or the height of a building.”
“Because all my life I’ve learned to suffer in silence.”
“In life, too, it’s the culminating point, the goal of all those who, like everyone else, make mistakes, but who, even in their darkest moments, never lose sight of the light emanating from their hearts.”
“I’ve noticed that loneliness gets stronger when we try to face it down, but gets weaker when we simply ignore it.”
“Her silence was the blank spaces between the words.”
“I don’t see why i should bother to look for someone who never took trouble to love me.”
“If you’re not in touch with your roots, you feel as if you’d lost touch with the world.”
“… seeks contact with the upper and lower world, but always ends up destroying her own life – she serves others, gives out energy, but receives nothing in return.”
“..It’s because for those who travel, time doesn’t exist, only space.”
“The light is unstable, the wind blows it out, the lightning ignites it, it is never simply there, shining like the sun, but it is worth fighting for.”
“We’re surrounded by Universal Desire. It’s not happiness; it’s desire. And desires are never stisfied, because once they are, they cease to be desires.”
“Belive in your ablilities; believe that you have already arrived where you wanted to arrive.”
“Faith is not desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us.”
“Instead of trying to prove that you’re better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humour. It will be difficult at first, but you’ll gradually get used to it.”
“It was more important to give than to receive, but while these were wise words, i was part of what is known as ‘humanity’, with frailties, my moments of indecision, my desire simply to live in peace, to be the slave of my feelings and to surrender myself without asking any questions, without even knowing if my love was reciprocated.”
“We are not the slaves of our feelings, but their masters. We serve and are served.”
“When hatred makes a person grow, it’s transformed into one of the many ways of loving.”
World of uncertainty 