Quote

The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.

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
Water
Sensations
Moment
Catch
Moments
Pleasant
Grips
Hands
Faster
Clutch
Trying
Fingers
Seize
Like
Harder
Elusive
Hold
Sensation
Becomes
Slips

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.
Alan Watts
Image
Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.
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
Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.
Alan Watts
Image
Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
Alan Watts
Image
The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Alan Watts
Image
To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses.
Alan Watts
Image
At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a problem of it.
Alan Watts
Image
The style of God venerated in church, mosque, and synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
Alan Watts
Image
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
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
If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.
Alan Watts
Image
Just as the highest and the lowest notes are equally inaudible, so perhaps, is the greatest sense and the greatest nonsense equally unintelligible.
Alan Watts
Image
Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.
Alan Watts
Image
But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
Alan Watts
Image
Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.
Alan Watts
Image
If we live, we live if we die, we die if we suffer, we suffer if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.
Alan Watts
Image
Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.
Alan Watts
Image
The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
Alan Watts
Image
I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.
Alan Watts