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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

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
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
The present is always changing the past.
ALAN WATTS

Change Inspirational One Liner Past Present
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
Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
ALAN WATTS

Arrangement Comparison Constellation Look Night Stars Universe
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.
ALAN WATTS

Convention Fatal Forget Serious Thinking
Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
ALAN WATTS

God Man Personal Religion Result Savior
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
ALAN WATTS

Bite Inspirational Teeth Try Yourself
A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.
ALAN WATTS

Inspirational Learning Scholar Student Try
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.
ALAN WATTS

Music Play Violin
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
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
ALAN WATTS

Forget Look Reality Universe World
It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
ALAN WATTS

Available Description Indeed Language Notice Reality Words
You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
ALAN WATTS

Far Telescope Vast
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
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

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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