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Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

Alan Watts

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
ALAN WATTS

Belief Cling Faith God Let Go
When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
ALAN WATTS

Attempt Avoid Control Deep Exercise Power
No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
ALAN WATTS

Capacity Fear Future Heart Live Love Planning Valid Work
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

Civilization Emotion Example Image Language Private Seldom Society Wisdom
Human desire tends to be insatiable.
ALAN WATTS

Desire Human One Liner
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

Eternal Future Life Listen Live Music Present Sake
Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
ALAN WATTS

Direction Move Philosophy Ready Stay
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
ALAN WATTS

Change Dance Inspirational Join Move Reality Sense
If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.
ALAN WATTS

Abyss Chase Death Depend Expectation Future Happiness Ourselves
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.
ALAN WATTS

Connection Life Mouth Move Ocean Reality Separate Source Water
Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Duty Genius Guilt Knowledge Love Sense
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.
ALAN WATTS

Adequate Poetry Talk Words
If one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.
ALAN WATTS

Endless Future Inspirational Life Present
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
ALAN WATTS

Anxiety Dead Each Other Equality Laugh Priest Religion Transformation
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
ALAN WATTS

Achievement Alive Life Panic
To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, To travel well is better than to arrive.
ALAN WATTS

Alive Arrive Dead Proverb Travel

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

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Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

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Popular Authors

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