Quote

The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

Alan Watts

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Mind
Hand
Careless
Open
Wholly
Moment
Utterly
Living
Fearful
Moments
Consists
Receptive
Art
Sensitive
Drifting
Hands
Neither
Clinging
Past
Unique
Regarding

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said.
Alan Watts
Image
The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
Alan Watts
Image
Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
Alan Watts
Image
Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world - the world of stars and waters, clouds, mountains and living organisms. There is such a thing as rhythm - rhythm of tides, rhythm of biological processes... There is rhythm and there is motion. Time is a way of measuring motion.
Alan Watts
Image
The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure like the Pasteur serum for rabies.
Alan Watts
Image
What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.
Alan Watts
Image
If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.
Alan Watts
Image
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 Watts
Image
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
Image
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
Alan Watts
Image
You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.
Alan Watts
Image
What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
Alan Watts
Image
The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.
Alan Watts
Image
The destination of life is this eternal moment.
Alan Watts
Image
In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
Alan Watts
Image
Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy. ... I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It's a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird.
Alan Watts
Image
Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.
Alan Watts
Image
There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.
Alan Watts
Image
Zen... does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
Alan Watts
Image
Thought is a means of concealing Truth.
Alan Watts