Alan Watts quotes - page 7

The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it becomes. It is like trying to clutch water in ones hands. The harder we grip, the more it slips through our fingers. (Alan Watts)
We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. View quote
Alan Watts
There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said. View quote
Alan Watts
If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed. View quote
Alan Watts
We know that from time to time there arise among human beings people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat. View quote
Alan Watts
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves. View quote
Alan Watts
Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick. View quote
Alan Watts
In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean. View quote
Alan Watts
...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences. View quote
Alan Watts
No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing. View quote
Alan Watts
The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion. (Alan Watts)
Society is our extended mind and body. View quote
Alan Watts
We must see that consciousness is neither an isolated soul nor the mere function of a single nervous system, but of that totality of interrelated stars and galaxies which makes a nervous system possible. View quote
Alan Watts
To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet. View quote
Alan Watts
Although profoundly 'inconsequential,' the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work. View quote
Alan Watts
There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. View quote
Alan Watts
I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware. View quote
Alan Watts
The mind's the standard of the man. View quote
Alan Watts
A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily. View quote
Alan Watts
Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. View quote
Alan Watts
God is not something in Hindu mythology with a white beard that sits on a throne, that has royal perogatives. God in Indian mythology is the self, Satcitananda. Which means sat, that which is, chit, that which is consciousness; that which is ananda is bliss. (Alan Watts)
Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. View quote
Alan Watts
I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy. View quote
Alan Watts
You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. View quote
Alan Watts
Archimedes said, "Give me a fulcrum and I will move the Earth"; but there isn't one. View quote
Alan Watts