The Pearson correlation coefficient is the geometrical mean of the slopes of the two regression lines. For me it is difficult to understand how a geometrical mean of the slope of the two regression lines can be a measure of the linear correlation between two variables X and Y.
I found this paper fantastic, Bravais-Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients: meaning, test of hypothesis and confidence interval by Artusi and coll., in explaining the Pearson coefficient, but I have difficulties in doing the last deduction.