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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.

Alan Watts

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
ALAN WATTS

Deep Fun God Man Serious Suffering
Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.
ALAN WATTS

Eternal Future Life Listen Live Music Present Sake
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
In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it’s all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
ALAN WATTS

Connection Life Mouth Move Ocean Reality Separate Source Water
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
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
ALAN WATTS

Life Live Present
The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
ALAN WATTS

Abstraction Future Past Reality
We confuse money with actual wealth.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Confusion Money One Liner Wealth
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
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
Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.
ALAN WATTS

Humanity Humor Knowledge Laugh Oneself
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
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
ALAN WATTS

Bite Inspirational Teeth Try Yourself
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 clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.
ALAN WATTS

Clash False Purpose Reality Science Truth
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
You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
ALAN WATTS

Ocean Physical Universe Wave
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
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
ALAN WATTS

Experience Mystery Problem Reality Solution
The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
ALAN WATTS

Animal Compassion Love Play World
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 source of all light is in the eye.
ALAN WATTS

Eyes Light One Liner Reality Source Truth
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
People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
ALAN WATTS

Concern Humble People Spiritual
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
ALAN WATTS

Experience Mystery Problem Reality Solution
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
Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.
ALAN WATTS

One Liner Reality

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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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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