Quotes About Attention

good things that we have in life are on temporary loan, at best, and can be taken away from us in an instant. The borderline between good fortune and disaster, between plenitude and paucity, between the warm hearth of love and the cold chamber of loneliness, was a narrow one. We could cross over from one to the other at any moment, as when we stumbled or fell, or simply walked over to the other side because we were paying insufficient attention to where we were.

You do not have to read a book to understand how the world works. You just have to keep your eyes open.

Nobody enjoys being on display, said Isabel. But then she thought: Some do, and so she added, Except actors. And narcissists.

What attracted men? Good looks? Certainly if a girl was pretty then she tended to get the attention of men; that was beyond any doubt at all. But it was not just prettiness that mattered, because there were many girls who did not look anything special but who seemed to find no difficulty in making men notice them. These girls dressed in a very careful way; they knew which colours appealed to men (red, and other bright colours; men were like cattle in that respect) [...]

Are we facing a new Dark Age, Angus? Possibly, Lou. A dark age in which our concentration spell is this long.

The more you listen, the more you learn.

That's the trouble with teachers—they spend a lot of their time saying things. If they said fewer things—hardly anything—then people would listen to them. But they don't.

There was always something going on in the background—some plotting or mulling over some slight or lack of attention, quite unintended, of course, but noted and filed away for subsequent scrutiny. And much of the time men would be unaware of it, until it all came out in a torrent of recrimination and tears.

It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to—or you ignored at your peril.

Love of what you do is unmistakable in the care with which you do it, whether it is seen in the way in which an artist applies the final touch of paint to his canvas, a master carpenter sands the last touch of roughness from the surface of the wood, or a woman making pasta kneads the compliant dough, draws it out, coaxes it to the right consistency.

I think this bandage is not needed," said Mma Ramotswe, bending down to remove it. "Hospitals feel they have to put a bandage on anybody who goes there—just in case. Sometimes you get a bandage even if you are just visiting somebody.

People, she said, generally wanted other people to believe the things they did, and would punish those who deviated...There were many such snares placed in the way of the unwary, and the consequence of inattention to the enforced wisdom of the times could be a medieval public shaming.

Love of what you do is unmistakable in the care with which you do it

Listen, my little peasant

And when they are out in public, we are secretly looking at people's arms to determine where we would start an IV, an Arizona nurse said. Sometimes if I'm out with a group of nurses, we're like, 'Wow, look at those veins. I could hit those from across the room.

All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face.

I have looked at it with all possible attention, said Dantes, and I only see a half-burnt paper, on which are traces of Gothic characters inscribed with a peculiar kind of ink.

The poetry of attention is not metaphysical. It trusts the opened eye to see. By faith, the eye stays open. And so the work of poetry is trust that, by faith, is shown to be no work at all.

In the poetry of attention, poems are not problems.

it is often more difficult to remember to be mindful than to be mindful itself. (p. 47)

Know that the amount of criticism you receive may correlate somewhat to the amount of publicity you receive.

You might think of praying without ceasing as communicating with God on one line while also taking calls on another. Even while you are talking on the other line, you never lose your awareness of the need to return your attention to the Lord. So praying without ceasing means you never really stop conversing with God; you simply have frequent interruptions.

According to James 1:22-25, we can experience God's truth so powerfully that what the Lord wants us to do becomes as plain to us as our face in the morning mirror. But if we do not apply the truth as we meet it, regardless of how wonderful the experience of discovering the truth has been, we deceive ourselves if we think we will be blessed for giving attention to the Bible on those occasions. The one who "will be blessed in his doing" is the one who does what Scripture says.

Too much attention to a particular sin or sins, and/or too little attention to communion with God (two things that often occur in tandem) inevitably shrivel the soul of a Christian.