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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

Human desire tends to be insatiable.
ALAN WATTS

Desire Human One Liner
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Command Feeling Love Pretend
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
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
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
Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
ALAN WATTS

Communication Experience Share Words
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 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
I am what happens between the maternity ward and the Crematorium.
ALAN WATTS

Happen Maternity Sarcastic
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
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
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.
ALAN WATTS

Music Play Violin
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
Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Duty Genius Guilt Knowledge Love Sense
We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.
ALAN WATTS

Action Expression Individual Leaving Nature Ocean People Process Unique Universe Waves World
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
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
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
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
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
ALAN WATTS

Duty God Infinite Religious
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
This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
ALAN WATTS

Complete Life Play Realize Secret Work
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
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
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

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.

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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.

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Popular Authors

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