Jarica Watts Quotes

Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration. ~ Alan Watts

[I]t is rather the past and the future which are the fleeting illusions, and the present which is eternally real. We discover that the linear succession of time is a convention of our single-track verbal thinking, of a consciousness which interprets the world by grasping little pieces of it, calling them things and events. But every such grasp of the mind excludes the rest of the world, so that this type of consciousness can get an approximate vision of the whole only through a series of grasps, one after the other. ~ Alan W. Watts

I think film is a director's medium and the good filmmakers that I like tell the darker stories. Therefore, I'm always inclined to follow people like David Cronenberg. ~ Naomi Watts

If you ask for something you might get something - if you ask for nothing you will get nothing. ~ Malcolm Watts

Man as an organism is to the world outside like a whirlpool is to a river: man and world are a single natural process, but we are behaving as if we were invaders and plunderers in a foreign territory. For when the individual is defined and felt as the separate personality or ego, he remains unaware that his actual body is a dancing pattern of energy that simply does not happen by itself. It happens only in concert with myriads of other patterns - called animals, plants, insects, bacteria, minerals, liquids, and gases. The definition of a person and the normal feeling of "I" do not effectively include these relationships. You say, "I came into this world." You didn't; you came out of it, as a branch from a tree. ~ Alan W. Watts

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go. ~ Alan W. Watts

Let's just agree that neither side has a monopoly on assholes. The point is, once you recognize that every human model of reality is fundamentally unreal, then it all just comes down to which one works best. ~ Peter Watts

When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was. ~ Alan Watts

It's not in the nature of the lamb to mourn the lion. ~ Peter Watts

Clear sight has nothing to do with trying to see; it is just the realization that that the eyes will take in every detail all by themselves, for so long as they open they can hardly prevent the light from reaching them. In the same way, there is no difficulty in being fully aware of the eternal present as soon as it is seen that one cannot possibly be aware of anything else - that in concrete fact there is no past or future. ~ Alan W. Watts

Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still. ~ Isaac Watts

Great power is worry, and total power is boredom, such that even God renounces it and pretends, instead, that he is people and fish and insects and plants: the myth of the king who goes wandering among his subjects in disguise. ~ Alan W. Watts

We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives.
As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves.
The brain desiring things which the body does not want, and the body desiring things which the brain does not allow; the brain giving directions which the body will not follow, and the body giving impulses which the brain cannot ~ Alan Watts

The heavens declare Thy glory, Lord, In every star Thy wisdom shines; But when our eyes behold Thy Word, We read Thy name in fairer lines. ISAAC WATTS ~ A.W. Tozer

And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars? ~ Peter Watts

Out of Mind spring in-numerable things, conditioned by discrimination (i.e., classification) and habit-energy; these things people accept as an external world. ... ~ Alan W. Watts

What's the survival value of obsessing on a sunset? ~ Peter Watts

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. ~ Alan W. Watts

Let's say (since in writing a book one has to say something) that reality or existence is a multidimensional and interwoven system of varying spectra of vibrations, and that man's five senses are attuned only to very small bands of these spectra. That sounds very profound and may mean nothing at all, but in reading it one should attend to the sound of the words rather than their meaning. Then you will get my point. ~ Alan W. Watts

It takes four and no more. It takes four to win the war. -Relly ~ Leander Watts

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black. ~ Alan W. Watts

I paint ideas, not things. My intention is less to paint works that are pleasing to the eye than to suggest great thoughts which will speak to the imagination and the heart and will arouse all that is noblest and best in man. ~ George Frederic Watts

Study detains the mind by the perpetual occurrence of something new, which may gratefully strike the imagination. ~ Isaac Watts

The 'you' who you think you are does not exist. ~ Alan Watts

I think in politics, in Congress, you often do things that are Republican, or you do things because you're a Democrat. Sometimes that's good, obviously, and sometimes that's obviously bad. But in the news business, there's no such thing as Republican or Democratic news. News is news. ~ J. C. Watts

Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence. ~ Alan Watts

A thousand ages in Thy sight
Are like an evening gone;
Short as the watch that ends the night
Before the rising sun. ~ Isaac Watts

And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. ~ Alan Watts

Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is. ~ Alan Watts

As Aristotle put it, the beginning of philosophy is wonder. I am simply amazed to find myself living on a ball of rock that swings around an immense spherical fire. I am more amazed that I am a maze - a complex wiggliness, an arabesque of tubes, filaments, cells, fibers, and films that are various kinds of palpitation in this stream of liquid energy. ~ Alan W. Watts

That's one of the lucky things about getting the success later on. I know how I want to dress, I know what kind of house I want to live in, I just know more about myself, and that's true about the roles I want to play and what parts of myself I want to express. You're just more in touch with yourself. ~ Naomi Watts

Not long ago Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed this law are responsible, by acts of commission or omission, for burning, polluting, and plundering the territory that the flag is supposed to represent. Therein, they exemplified the peculiar and
perhaps fatal fallacy of civilization: the confusion of symbol with reality. ~ Alan W. Watts

Actually, the world is not complex. It is the task of trying to figure it out with words or numbers that is complex. ~ Alan W. Watts

But by meditation I do not mean a practice or exercise undertaken as a preparation for something, as a means to some future end, or as a discipline in which one is concerned with progress. A better word may be "contemplation" or even "centering," for what I mean is a slowing down of time, of mental hurry, and an allowing of one's attention to rest in the present - so coming to the unseeking observation, not of what should be, but of what is. ~ Alan W. Watts

The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international
peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and
assistance to the starving of the earth - urgent as they are - will destroy
rather than help if made in the present spirit. For, as things stand, we
have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not
enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they
will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and
similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by
those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love.
No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart,
just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no
capacity for living now. ~ Alan W. Watts

They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan Watts

Life is a carnivore. Eat it before it eats you. ~ Malcolm Watts

When you realize that you live in, that indeed you are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain. At once it becomes obvious why this universe exists, why conscious beings have been produced, why sensitive organs, why space, time, and change. The whole problem of justifying nature, of trying to make life mean something in terms of its future, disappears utterly. Obviously, it all exists for this moment.

It is a dance, and when you are dancing you are not intent on getting somewhere. You go round and round, but not under the illusion that you are pursuing something, or fleeing from the jaws of hell. ~ Alan W. Watts

Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence. ~ Isaac Watts

Most people seem to think that organisms develop adaptive traits in response to environmental change. This is bullshit. The environment changes and those who already happen to have newly adaptive traits don't get wiped out. ~ Peter Watts

Lord, what a thoughtless wretch was I,
To mourn, and murmur and repine,
To see the wicked placed on high,
In pride and robes of honor shine.
But oh, their end, their dreadful end,
Thy sanctuary taught me so,
On slipp'ry rocks I see them stand,
And fiery billows roll below. ~ Isaac Watts

You can't see why anyone wouldn't want to wallow in the sheer beauty of language. ~ Peter Watts