I'm not doing anything, and yet I'm also doing the most important thing a man can do: I'm listening to what I needed to hear from myself.
Paulo CoelhoRead
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.
Interpretation
Love can exist for multiple people throughout one's life without negating past experiences.
In this quote, Paulo Coelho reflects on the transformative nature of love and how it can evolve over time. He acknowledges that while one can love deeply and fully with different partners, it is important to cherish past relationships without diminishing current ones. Coelho highlights the uniqueness of each love and warns against the trivialization of emotions by comparing them to measurable entities.
In practice
This quote can be used in a wedding speech to emphasize the beauty of loving again.
I'm not doing anything, and yet I'm also doing the most important thing a man can do: I'm listening to what I needed to hear from myself.
Each stone, each bend cries welcome to him. He identifies with the mountains and the streams, he sees something of his own soul in the plants and the animals and the birds of the field.
We need to clear our minds of bad thoughts.
Having the courage to take the steps we always wanted to take is the only way of showing that we trust in God.
The fool who loves giving advice on our garden never tends his own plants
Sometimes the Warrior feels as if he were living two lives at once.
The fragility of love is what is most at stake here—humanity's most crucial three-word avowal is often uttered only to find itself suddenly embarrassing or orphaned or isolated or ill-timed—but strangely enough it can work better as a literal or reassuring statement than a transcendent or numinous or ecstatic one.
But hurry, let's entwine ourselves as one, our mouth broken, our soul bitten by love, so time discovers us safely destroyed.
Then at certain moments I remember one of his words and I suddenly feel the sensual woman flaring up, as if violently caressed. I say the word to myself, with joy. It is at such a moment that my true body lives.
I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.
I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it -- to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.
Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours.
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