Quotes About Distractions

Life would be intolerable if we were conscious of it. Happily, we are not. We live with the same unconsciousness as animals, in the same futile vain way, and if we think in advance about death (which they, in all probability, without being dogmatic do not do), we think about it through the veils of so many oblivions, so many distractions and meanderings, that it can hardly be said we think about it at all.

I'm a family man now. I don't need no distractions; I don't need no big cities, no big lights, at this point in my career.

Very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterrupted time at an office.

You can be whoever you want to be. Don't let those voices or noises, whether they're inside or outside, distract you.

You will encounter many distractions and many temptations to put your goal aside: The security of a job, a wife who wants kids, whatever. But if you hang in there, always following your vision, I have no doubt you will succeed.

The money, the pictures, the fans following you everywhere you can have everything you want. There are different temptations every time, but you have to be calm with your focus and your work.

Some athletes can change, because it's not easy when you became famous too fast. The money, the pictures, the fans following you everywhere you can have everything you want. There are different temptations every time, but you have to be calm with your focus and your work.

Without deadlines and restrictions I just tend to become preoccupied with other things.

Be master of your petty annoyances and conserve your energies for the big, worthwhile things. It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out - it's the grain of sand in your shoe.

the problems that meditation can help you overcome often make it hard to meditate in the first place.

He once recounted a time when he was trying to meditate and kept getting interrupted by sounds from a festival in a nearby village. Then, as he recalls it, he had a realization: "The sound is just the sound. It's me who is going out to annoy it. If I leave the sound alone, it won't annoy me. . . . If I don't go out and bother the sound, it's not going to bother me.

Here we free ourselves of distractions and try to be present in a world that conspires against it

We push aside work that takes long—novels, poetry collections, biographies, articles, memoirs—to write e-mail messages that take little time while complaining we have no time to write.

la vida es eso que sucede mientras nosotros nos ocupamos de otra cosa. Y es verdad que perdemos el tiempo preocupándonos por nimiedades, que nos aturdimos y nos empecinamos tontamente, que tendemos a pensar que la auténtica vida está por llegar.

Writers shouldn't have lives that are interesting. It gets in the way of your work. —Interview on Bravo Channel, Feb. 14, 1991

Unfortunately life has a way of sidetracking one's greatest ambitions. Painters, would-be artists, end up whitewashing walls. Sculptors are forced to design toilets. Writers become critics or publicists. Archaeologists, like myself, can become gravediggers.

If people focused on life's really important matters there'd be a shortage of golf clubs.

When we play games, our brains respond differently to stress and obstacles. We're better able to control our attention and ignore distractions.

The average millionaire can't tell you who got thrown off the island last night.

The vast majority of things are distractions, and very few really matter to your success.

You don't write down every evening what has happened during the day: you don't keep a diary?' 'No. Alas, my life is spent in frivolous trifles, which I even forget myself.

Alas, my life is spent in frivolous trifles, which I even forget myself.

It's amazing what you can block out when you really try. Although some things stay with you no matter what they affect everything that you do.

Teenagers! What the heck is wrong with them?! Just when you're about to get a good snowball fight going, they have to ruin it by talking about 'relationships'!