Alan Watts

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

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

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

Join the dance.

The menu is not the meal.

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.

In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon-keeper occupied the same level of society, and it was the highest.

You can do anything, but not everything.

I realize that advice is worth what it costs – that is, nothing.

Buy what thou hast no Need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries.

“He who angers you, conquers you.” – Elizabeth Kenny

When you do something that you really think is stupid, bad decision, irresponsibleand it just happens and you suffer it then that’s penalty. But if you learn from it it becomes tuition.

Parents need to dial in and know what their kids are doing.

We tell lies when we are afraid, . . . afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.

I ask you to go back and read them over again, and this time answer “Self-acceptance was the foundation of the happiest time in your life and it was the engine that powered the train.

Only once in my life was I on the edge of incivility.

The quickest way from A to B is not always at the most feverish pace.

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

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.