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Quotes about Breath by Alan Watts

  • Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone.
  • To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
  • Nothing is more creative than death, since it has the whole secret of life. It means that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, that 'I' cannot continue, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a man knows this, he lives for the first time in his life. By holding his breath, he loses it. By letting go he finds it.
  • To resist change, to try to cling to life, is therefore like holding your breath: if you persist you kill yourself.