Confucians, along with Hebrew, Islamic, and Catholic scholastics, as well as Protestant fundamentalists, are like tourists who study guidebooks and m… - Alan Watts

Whatever villainies the British may have committed in India, their Christian consciences balked at the practice of sati, which required a widow to commit suicide at her husband’s funeral. Truly civilized people are — we feel — not faces on the sky but fully enclosed heads containing souls, each one of infinite value in the sight of God.

Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock.

Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it persists for ever.