“The common mistake of the religious celibate has been to suppose that the highest spiritual life absolutely demands the renunciation of sexuality,… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“We do not dance to reach a certain point on the floor, but simply to dance. Energy itself, as William Blake said,… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“We have made a problem for ourselves by confusing the intelligible with the fixed. We think that making sense out of life… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Thus not to see the unity of self and other is the fear of life, and not to see the unity of… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Now as you plumb out into the universe and explore it astronomically, it gets very strange. You begin to see things in… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“As soon as we freed ourselves from the mirage of hurrying time—which was nothing more than the projection of our own impatience—we… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Do not suppose, however, that we are merely a society of lotus-eaters, lolling on divans and cuddling lovely women. Ecstasy is something… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Zen Buddhism is a way and a view of life which does not belong to any of the formal categories of modern… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“To define means to fix, and, when you get down to it, real life isn’t fixed.” — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Reasonable–that is, human–men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“The precious … uniqueness which the human individual claims is conferred on him not by possession of an immortal soul but by possession of… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“But when you know for sure that your separate ego is a fiction, you actually feel yourself as the whole process and… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Life is a series of urgent choices demanding firm commitment to this or to that.” — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Let’s say (since in writing a book one has to say something) that reality or existence is a multidimensional and interwoven system… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“This state of affairs is known technically as the "double-bind." A person is put in a double-bind by a command or request… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“For Taoism concerns itself with unconventional knowledge, with the understanding of life directly, instead of in the abstract, linear terms of representational… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Life seems to be a system that eats itself to death, and in which victory equals defeat.” — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Lao-tzu didn’t actually say very much more about the meaning of Tao. The Way of Nature, the Way of happening self-so, or,… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“The morality that goes with this understanding is, above all, the frank recognition of your dependence upon enemies, underlings, out-groups, and, indeed,… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“The common mistake of the religious celibate has been to suppose that the highest spiritual life absolutely demands the renunciation of sexuality, as if… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Real freedom cannot exist alongside false freedom, but the abandonment of false freedom looks as if it would leave you as good as dead.… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“But it is not that you are something which is just watching what happens. “What happens” is just using your organism to watch itself.… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Read Theodore Schwenk’s marvelous book Sensitive Chaos (London, Rudolph Steiner Press, 1965),” — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what they represent, and in this respect mental images and lofty abstractions can… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“The more we accustom ourselves to understanding the present in terms of memory, the unknown by the known, the living by the dead, the… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“We do not dance to reach a certain point on the floor, but simply to dance. Energy itself, as William Blake said, is eternal… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“Thought and science are therefore raising problems which their terms of study can never answer, many of which are doubtless problems only for thought.… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“But this is at the same time a vivid way of saying that your soul, or rather your essential Self, is the whole cosmos… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“When you no longer make the distinction between the universe and how you are acting upon it, you are really on your own and… — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
“My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water.” — Alan Wilson Watts Copy Share Image
