201 ratings (3.68 avg)
1 review

Melvin Willis

Add friend

Melvin’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (21)

currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (202)

did-not-finish‎ (0)

Stats | More…

“[T]he natural universe is not a linear system. It involves an infinitude of variables interacting simultaneously, so that it would take incalculable aeons to translate even one moment of its operation into linear, alphabetic language.”
― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

tags: taoism

4 likes

“The maliciousness of psychiatry is that it promotes itself as a medical discipline, although it is actually only part of the state authority."24 Therein”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies

12 likes

“Great power is worry, and total power is boredom, such that even God renounces it and pretends, instead, that he is people and fish and insects and plants: the myth of the king who goes wandering among his subjects in disguise.”
― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

tags: taoism

22 likes

“Confucians, along with Hebrew, Islamic, and Catholic scholastics, as well as Protestant fundamentalists, are like tourists who study guidebooks and maps instead of wandering freely and looking at the view. Speech and writing are undoubtedly marvelous, but for this very reason they have a hypnotic and fascinating quality which can lead to the neglect of nature itself until they become too much of a good thing.”
― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

tags: catholic, confucianism, esotericism, nature, protestant

7 likes

“The highest good is like water, for the good of water is that it nourishes everything without striving. It occupies the place which all men think bad [i.e., the lowest level].17 [102d] It is thus that Tao in the world is like a river going down the valley to the ocean.18 [102e] The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.19 [102g] How do coves and oceans become kings of a hundred rivers? Because they are good at keeping low— That is how they are kings of the hundred rivers.20 [102f] Nothing in the world is weaker than water, But it has no better in overcoming the hard.21 [101a]”
― Alan W. Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way

6 likes

More of Melvin’s quotes…