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 WATTSThe present is always changing the past.
More Alan Watts Quotes
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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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.
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We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision.
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Only doubtful truths need defense.
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The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
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Like too much alcohol, self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double.
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The source of all light is in the eye.
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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.
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Society is our extended mind and body.
ALAN WATTS