Quote

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.

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
Composer
Would
Order
Simply
Fulfilled
Like
Ends
Courses
Final
Sonata
Also
Course
Finals
Sonatas
Music
Purpose
Finale
Nothing
Moment
Dancing
Composers
Play
Spiritual
Reach
Chord
Writing
Write
Dance
Chords
Things
Moments
Meaning

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
Alan Watts
Image
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
Image
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
Alan Watts
Image
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.
Alan Watts
Image
The Highest to which people can attain is wonder and if the prime phenomenon makes them wonder, let them be content nothing higher can it give them, and nothing further should they seek for behind it there is the limit.
Alan Watts
Image
You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
Alan Watts
Image
No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.
Alan Watts
Image
Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.
Alan Watts
Image
Courage is the goal of cowards.
Alan Watts
Image
The only serious side-effect of # marijuana is that you might get arrested.
Alan Watts
Image
... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).
Alan Watts
Image
As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
Alan Watts
Image
You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
Alan Watts
Image
People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
Alan Watts
Image
You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
Alan Watts
Image
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are coins for real thing
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
Alan Watts
Image
Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.
Alan Watts
Image
Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.
Alan Watts