What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social c… - Alan Watts

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.

There is, then, an analogy–and perhaps more than mere analogy–between central vision and conscious, one-at-a-time thinking, and between peripheral vision and the rather mysterious process which enables us to regulate the incredible complexity of our bodies without thinking at all. It should be noted, further, that we call our bodies complex as a result of trying to understand them in terms of linear thought, of words and concepts. But the complexity is not so much in our bodies as in the task of trying to understand them by this means of thinking.

Money alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.

...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.