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Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.

Alan Watts

The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
ALAN WATTS

Constant Construction Ego Empty Expectation Future Memories Past Reality Regret
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
ALAN WATTS

Function Ocean Process Universe Yourself
The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
ALAN WATTS

Animal Compassion Love Play World
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
Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated.
ALAN WATTS

Advice Existence Expectation Guidance Influence Light Love Principle Room Rule Truth
It’s 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

Life Misery Spend
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
ALAN WATTS

Nature System Trust Yourself
Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
ALAN WATTS

Communication Experience Share Words
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
ALAN WATTS

Faith Float Freedom Grab Relaxation Swim Trust Water Yourself
You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.
ALAN WATTS

Obligation Person Philosophy
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
Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.
ALAN WATTS

Discover Explore Home Reason Requirement Schedule Stay Surprise Travel
Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
ALAN WATTS

Attraction Content Inferior Material Package Pleasure Symbol
Belief clings, but faith lets go.
ALAN WATTS

Belief Faith Let Go One Liner
Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.
ALAN WATTS

Book Consume Currency Eat Life Money Paper Real Scripture Wealth
Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
ALAN WATTS

Conscious Glory Listen Magnificant Perceive Universe Witness

Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.

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Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.

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