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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

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
ALAN WATTS

Animal Compassion Love Play World
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
Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double.
ALAN WATTS

Alcohol Conscious Ourselves Philosophy
Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
ALAN WATTS

Difficult Fascinate Frustration Individual Intelligence Oneself Wisdom
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
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
ALAN WATTS

Bite Inspirational Teeth Try Yourself
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.
ALAN WATTS

Arrangement Deal Experience Hospital Interesting Learning Sick
Only doubtful truths need defense.
ALAN WATTS

Deep Defense Doubt Need One Liner
When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of, Nothing is left but to love.
ALAN WATTS

Afraid Darkness Finding Love
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.
ALAN WATTS

Arise Heat Human Love Natural People Sun Time
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Aware Awareness Beginning Future Live Past Present Real World
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision.
ALAN WATTS

Action Decision Feeling Follow Happen Voluntary
Belief clings, but faith lets go.
ALAN WATTS

Belief Faith Let Go One Liner
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
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
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
Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
ALAN WATTS

Concentration Look World
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
The art of meditation is a way of getting into touch with reality, and the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of touch with reality.
ALAN WATTS

Civilization Meditation People Reality Reason Touch
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
Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
ALAN WATTS

Delay Hurry Present Resistance Try
You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
ALAN WATTS

Final Play Reach Writing
The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.
ALAN WATTS

Bloom Giant Glory Heart Life Live Morning
No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
ALAN WATTS

Bridge Dangerous Insane Life Time
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
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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