Quote 1
"This is the first phase of the job," he said. "I have to separate out the sulfur. To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work. Now, I'm beginning what I could have started ten years ago. But I'm happy at least that I didn't wait twenty years." (2.298)
The Englishman crosses the desert to find the alchemist, only to learn that he needs to get his head out of the books and actually try to turn lead into gold. (That's the equivalent of straightening out your dollar bills and actually buying a lottery ticket.) The only thing the alchemist had to teach him was to stop being afraid.
Quote 2
"If I could, I'd write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence. It's with those words that the universal language is written." (2.122)
So is the universal language kind of like binary code, with "luck" and "coincidence" repeated over and over instead of 0s and 1s? Not exactly; it's more that the universe brings like things together (coincidence) or blazes trails for people (luck) as a way of speaking or communicating with them.