Alan Watts

Quotes...

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.”
“To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.”
The alternative to self-love is self-destruction. Because [if] you won’t take the risk of loving yourself properly, you will be compelled instead to destroy yourself. So which would you rather have?
“What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”
“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.”
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
“If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you’ll spend your life completely wasting your time. You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing, which is stupid.”
“There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.”
“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.”
“The attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”
“The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.”
“Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith in life, in other people, and in oneself, is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.”
“What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.”
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

“What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”

Quote by Alan Watts