

“Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity
― The Wisdom of Insecurity

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”
― In One Era & Out the Other
― In One Era & Out the Other

“Lasting happiness—the underlying quest in almost all of Watts’s copious writing—can only be achieved by giving up the ego-self, which is a pure illusion anyway. The ego-self constantly pushes reality away. It constructs a future out of empty expectations and a past out of regretful memories.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity
― The Wisdom of Insecurity

“I've heard my teacher say, where there are machines, there are bound to be machine worries; where there are machine worries, there are bound to be machine hearts. With a machine heart in your breast, you've spoiled what was pure and simple; and without the pure and simple, the life of the spirit knows no rest.”
― The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu
― The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“Belief clings, but faith lets go.”
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
― The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Traciebells’s 2024 Year in Books
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