Alan Watts Quotes

Everything changes. The more I try to hold on to the moment, the more it slips through my fingers.

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washèd it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands. And yet, this pouring, this flood of encounters, struggles, dreams...

I remember as a kid having a balloon and accidentally letting the string go and watching it just float off and into the sky until it disappeared. And there's something about that, even, that feels very much like what life is, you know, that it's fleeting, and it's temporal.

Happiness is like a cloud, if you stare at it long enough, it evaporates.

Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.

He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand.

Things always seem to glide away. They come to you, stay a moment, then leave again.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

Nothing can be sadder or more profound than to see a thousand things for the first and last time. To journey is to be born and die each minute...All the elements of life are in constant flight from us, with darkness and clarity intermingled, the vision and the eclipse; we look and hasten, reaching out our hands to clutch; every happening is a bend in the road...and suddenly we have grown old. We have a sense of shock and gathering darkness; ahead is a black doorway; the life that bore us is a flagging horse, and a veiled stranger is waiting in the shadows to unharness us.

We write our names in the sand: and then the waves roll in and wash them away.

Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand.

Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown apple leaves and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on.

Life is a stream On which we strew Petal by petal the flower of our heart; The end lost in dream, They float past our view, We only watch their glad, early start. Freighted with hope, Crimsoned with joy, We scatter the leaves of our opening rose; Their widening scope, Their distant employ, We never shall know. And the stream as it flows Sweeps them away, Each one is gone Ever beyond into infinite ways. We alone stay While years hurry on, The flower fared forth, though its fragrance still stays.

Everything is about to disappear. You've got to hurry up if you still want to see things.

The morning Sunne never lasts a day.

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow… And not fireworks, either

I know the best moments can never be captured on film, even as I spend nearly half my life trying to do just that.

Exhaust the little moment / Soon it dies.

For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers.

All things fade and quickly turn to myth.

People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.