Alan Watts

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

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.

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

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 menu is not the meal.

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.

Well, I’m not sure what pop psychology is, but I don’t like it.

I’m slipping. I’m made of departed dreams and a stubborn fog that feels nothing like a veil.

Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

I grew up not understanding what was true and what was not true. It gave me a sense of unreality.

If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.

Progress is a new season and the rule of progress is everything in its season.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.

A man can’t ‘just be friends’ with another woman. Period.

Every one knows that insufficient rest and gorging are not good for anyone, either physically or mentally.

Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.

You get what you ask for in this life. If you ask for nothing, you get nothing.

When everyone is against you, it means that you are absolutely wrong– or absolutely right.

Love is kind, it’s clear. It’s effortless, and it’s irresistible.

That dog don’t hunt.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.