Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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.

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.

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

I don’t substitute anybody else’s judgment for my own.

If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

And of all the things I look forward to in life, falling in love with you is at the top of the list.

When you allow a person’s words to upset you, you’re giving away your power.

If she doesn’t acknowledge what happened, then how can we trust that she is going to be different in the future?

Willpower is a myth. The problem with trying to use willpower to achieve and sustain a behavioral change is that it is fueled by emotion. And as we all know, our emotions are, at best, fickle. They come and go. When your emotions start running down — and they will — even your best-laid plans will fall flat.

Pardon me if I haunt you tonight.

Enduring habits I hate…. Yes, at the very bottom of my soul I feel grateful to all my misery and bouts of sickness and everything about me that is imperfect, because this sort of thing leaves me with a hundred backdoors through which I can escape from enduring habits.

Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.

I’m not a survivor. Survivor comes from saying you barely made it and you’re a victim. I am triumphant. I’m not a survivor.

I mean, if you degrade someone, you isolate them, you control them, you call them names, you demean them. That’s a horrible existence for people.

That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong.

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Sometimes our idea of luxuries are our client’s ideas of necessities. You might think having a helicopter pad in the back garden, 20 housekeepers and two tennis coaches is over the top. But for them it’s like you buying a sandwich.