Alan Watts Quotes - Page 3

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• What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present

  Alan Watts

  Inability

  29 Copy quote

• Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.

  Alan Watts

  Trying, Way, Hurrying

  Alan W. Watts (2010). “Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality”, p.32, New World Library

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• If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song."

  Alan Watts

  Love, Song, Bird

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• We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

  Alan Watts

  Journey, Heaven, Musical

  89 Copy quote

• For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax. There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.

  Alan Watts

  Contentment, Alive, Able

  103 Copy quote

• Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.

  Alan Watts

  Short Life, Long, Way

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• If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

  Alan Watts

  May, Forget, Improving

  88 Copy quote

• Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.

  Alan Watts

  Letting Go, Mean, Men

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

  89 Copy quote

• The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now?

  Alan Watts

  Realizing, Should, Right Now

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• We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Thinking, Example

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.50, Souvenir Press

  63 Copy quote

• Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Skills, Energy

  14 Copy quote

• Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

  Alan Watts

  Love, Good Morning, Sexy

  Alan Watts (2011). “In My Own Way: An Autobiography”, p.189, New World Library

  91 Copy quote

• When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.

  Alan Watts

  Change, World, Way

  Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.123, New World Library

  38 Copy quote

• The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Puppets, Whole

  Alan Watts (1999). “The Tao of Philosophy”, p.36, Tuttle Publishing

  18 Copy quote

• Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.

  Alan Watts

  Goal, Missing, World

  Alan Watts (1989). “The way of Zen”, Vintage

  27 Copy quote

• Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.

  Alan Watts

  Where You Are, Objects

  Alan Watts (2017). “Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek”, p.89, Sounds True

  26 Copy quote

• No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them.

  Alan Watts

  Life, Music, Symphony

  16 Copy quote

• There is a deep, peaceful calm in the dawning of a new day.

  Alan Watts

  New Day, Peaceful, Calm

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• If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.

  Alan Watts

  Stupid, Order, Important

  31 Copy quote

• What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

  Alan Watts

  Spending, Enjoy, Objects

  36 Copy quote

• The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.

  Alan Watts

  Art, Light, Sculpture

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

  Alan Watts

  Ifs

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “The Way of Zen”, p.128, Vintage

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• Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

  Alan Watts

  Past, Listening, Life Is Like

  Alan Watts (1983). “The Way of Liberation: Essays and Lectures on the Transformation of the Self”, Weatherhill, Incorporated

  37 Copy quote

• Your soul isn't in your body; your body is in your soul!

  Alan Watts

  Soul, Body, Your Soul

  Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Zen?”, p.110, New World Library

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• Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

  Alan Watts

  Unity, Chaos, Duality

  Alan Watts (2017). “Psychotherapy East & West”, p.126, New World Library

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