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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

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
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
Belief clings, but faith lets go.
ALAN WATTS

Belief Faith Let Go One Liner
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
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
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
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
I owe my solitude to other people.
ALAN WATTS

One Liner Owe People Solitude
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
Human desire tends to be insatiable.
ALAN WATTS

Desire Human One Liner
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
We confuse money with actual wealth.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Confusion Money One Liner Wealth
Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double.
ALAN WATTS

Alcohol Conscious Ourselves Philosophy
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
Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Duty Genius Guilt Knowledge Love Sense
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Watts Quotes