black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

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

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
What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.
ALAN WATTS

Discover Finding Imagination Pain Safety Seek
You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
ALAN WATTS

Science System
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
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
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
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
ALAN WATTS

Attitude Aware Environment Immense Learning Mirror Ourselves People Power Social Teaching
There is no other reality than present reality.
ALAN WATTS

Life Present Reality
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
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
Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.
ALAN WATTS

One Liner Reality
My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.
ALAN WATTS

Death Disappear Particular Pattern Water
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
The relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
ALAN WATTS

Impossible Love Realize Relationship Self Love Yourself
We must abandon completely the notion of blaming the past for any kind of situation we’re in and reverse our thinking and see that the past always flows back form the present.
ALAN WATTS

Abandonment Blame Follow Past Present Reverse Situation Thinking
One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Deal Freedom Guilt Perfection Worry

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Watts Quotes