The Aleph by Paulo Coelho

I have just finished reading "Aleph". Like all Paulo Coelho novels this contains a new age sort of Roman Catholic spirituality in a story of personal discovery and exploration. Coelho is very popular throughout the world becasue he taps into a longing for religion lost and spirituality that touches the real problems of today. The problems that Coelho addresses are the self centred problems of the middle classes who spend their time and money searching for meaning in many and varied aesoteric ways rather than the problems faced by the poor and suffering in their struggle for survival and acceptance as members of the human race.

The novel is predicated on a belief in reincarnation which is hardly mainline Catholic or even western teaching!

Though I don't accept much of what the author writes he does have some great quotes that are full of wisdom and insight about life and the human condition. Here are a few examples:

"To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life."

"When faced by any loss, there's no point in trying to recover what has been; it's best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new."

"I remember the many occasions on which help has come from precisely those people whom I though had nothing to add to my life"

"Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second [at the end of life] and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: I made some mistakes but I wasn't a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do."

"Travel is never a matter of money but of courage."
"Life is the train, not the station."