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The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.

Alan Watts

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
Feels
Myth
Parts
Taught
Common
Confronting
Universe
Underlying
Culture
Myths
Sense
Identical
Feel
Aliens

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live.
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You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
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...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.
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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.
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You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
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Enlightenment remains unrealized so long as it is considered as a specific state to be attained, and for which there are standards of success.
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Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.
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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.
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The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.
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Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
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For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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The destination of life is this eternal moment.
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Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
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We get such a kick out of looking forward to pleasures and rushing ahead to meet them that we can’t slow down enough to enjoy them when they come.
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We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time
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The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
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