Alan Watts

If you really understand Zen, you can use any book, even the dictionary, because the sound of the rain needs no translation.

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.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

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

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

No American ought to be compelled to strike for his rights. He ought to receive them naturally, easily, as a matter of course.

Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.

I think I am actually humble. I think I’m much more humble than you would understand.

Awareness without action is worthless.

Love thy neighbour as yourself, but choose your neighbourhood.

When I went to our American history books to learn how our forefathers harrowed the land, I discovered that the historians knew nothing about harrows. Yet our country has depended more on harrows than on guns or speeches. I thought that a history which excluded harrows, and all the rest of daily life, was bunk. And I think so yet.

You gotta do what you love and really believe in it because that is your truth.

My Grandmother is over eighty and still doesn’t need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

When you embark for strange places don’t leave any of yourself safely at the shore… Have the nerve to go into unexplored territory.

From the day I arrived, California seemed like an enchanted land.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

The farther you look back, the farther you can look ahead.

She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.

Man is a comparative being. Substandard things must go before super-standard things can come.