The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

(another read-inside-of-one-day, it's a book that perhaps speaks for itself...these are some things underlined in my copy. and i feel compelled to italicize almost all of it.)

"What is a personal calling? It is God's blessing, it is the path that God chose for you here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream."

"We know what we want to do, but our afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to pursue our dream. We do not realize that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward. We do not realize that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey."

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."

"Once we have overcome the defeats -- and we always do -- we are filled by a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life."

"Having disinterred our dream, having used the power of love to nurture it and spent many years living with the scars, we suddenly notice that what we always wanted is there, waiting for us, perhaps the very next day."

"If you believe yourself worthy...you understand why you are here."

"And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering."

"Here I am, between my flock and my treasure, the boy thought. He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have."

"For her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it's because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises."

"Don't forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else."

"This wasn't a strange place; it was a new one."

"And maybe it wasn't that they were teaching me, but that I was learning from them."

"Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure...the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn't matter."

"When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision."

"When something evolves, everything around that thing evolves as well."