Generous In Death – Spiritual Story by Paulo Coelho

A man was traveling from one city to another when he heard that a ferocious battle had taken place and that his cousin was among the wounded soldiers. He rushed to the place and saw that his cousin was on death's door.

He offered him a little water from his canteen, but just at that moment another wounded soldier beside him groaned, and the cousin asked him to give the water to his neighbor.

“But if I go over there, you may not survive! All your life you have been always so generous!”

Gathering his last ounce of strength, the wounded man replied:

“That's another reason to be generous, now that I'm about to die.”

Paulo Coelho is a Brazilian author who has sold more than 100 million books, which include 14 short story collections and the novel “The Alchemist.” He has been a fan of the Internet since the early 1990s. He spends at least three hours a day online, writing e-mails back and forth with his readers and posting photos on Flickr, MySpace and a blog.

Coelho's online activities also include promoting pirated copies of his own books. Since 2005 he's been directing his readers to an online site where they can download his books, in languages from German to Japanese, for free. “I always thought that when, at the beginning of your career, you strive to be read, you can't change your mind later and become greedy about it.”