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If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.

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
Improving
Forget
Lives
May
Live
Unduly
Absorbed
Altogether

More quotes by Alan Watts

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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.
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There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it.
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Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.
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You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
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You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.
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But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. If you awaken from this illusion, and you understand that black implies white, self implies other, life implies death - or shall I say, death implies life - you can conceive yourself.
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By going out of your mind, you come to your senses
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The difference between a baby and adult is that a baby believes in everything while the adult doubts everything. Babies also only tell the truth until they learn what a lie is.
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That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.
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But we must not suffer over the suffering.
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
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Many people never grow up. They stay all their lives with a passionate need for external authority and guidance, pretending not to trust their own judgment.
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You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean.
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The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from a giant pine that lives for a thousand years.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
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In Zen, poverty is voluntary, and considered not really as poverty so much as simplicity, freedom, unclutteredness.
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Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality.
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I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
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Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen which are acceptable only when they happen without force.
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