Quotes About Attention

Psychopaths tend to make exceptionally good eye contact.

Faith is rather like a rhinoceros, in fact: it won't do much in the way of real work for you, and yet at close quarters it will make spectacular claims upon your attention.

mindfulness" is not very clear, and it takes some training to distinguish between being lost in thought and seeing thoughts for what they are.

neuroscientists now acknowledge that the human mind tends to wander, engaging in what has been called "stimulus-independent thought.

One must be able to pay attention closely enough to glimpse what consciousness is like between thoughts—that is, prior to the arising of the next one. Consciousness does not feel like a self.

And there is something degraded and degrading about many of our habits of attention as we shop, gossip, argue, and ruminate our way to the grave. Perhaps I should speak only for myself here: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest, however, that an alternative exists. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for moments at a time. Most

How we pay attention to the present moment largely determines the character of our experience and, therefore, the quality of our lives.

Uma das primeiras coisas que se aprende ao praticar meditação é que nada é tedioso em si — na verdade, o tédio é simplesmente falta de atenção. Preste atenção o suficiente, e a mera experiência de respirar pode recompensar meses ou anos de vigilância constante.

One can traverse the Eastern paths simply by becoming interested in the nature of one's own mind—especially in the immediate causes of psychological suffering—and by paying closer attention to one's experience in every present moment. There is, in truth, nothing one need believe.

how one uses one's attention, moment to moment, largely determines what kind of person one becomes. Our minds—and lives—are largely shaped by how we use them.

There is nothing spooky about mindfulness. It is simply a state of clear, nonjudgmental, and undistracted attention to the contents of consciousness, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Cultivating this quality of mind has been shown to reduce pain, anxiety, and depression; improve cognitive function; and even produce changes in gray matter density in regions of the brain related to learning and memory, emotional regulation, and self-awareness.

There is now a large literature on the psychological benefits of meditation. Different techniques produce long-lasting changes in attention, emotion, cognition, and pain perception, and these correlate with both structural and functional changes in the brain.

I]f the basic claims of religion are true, the scientific worldview is so blinkered and susceptible to supernatural modification as to be rendered nearly ridiculous; if the basic claims of religion are false, most people are profoundly confused about the nature of reality, confounded by irrational hopes and fears, and tending to waste precious time and attention--often with tragic results. Is this really a dichotomy about which science can claim to be neutral?

It's not so much what we pay attention to, it's the quality of our attention.

Another time, after failing to get my attention as I participated in a White House conference call on Russia sanctions, Declan stomped away, muttering, "Putin, Putin, Putin . . . When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan

I don't like this idea It is too much focus on something I am trying to forget I am afraid that this attention to detail will only fuel my anxiety

Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

The true art of memory, is the art of attention

I look upon it that a man who does not mind his stomach would hardly mind anything else.

Fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety.

The custom of frequent reflection will keep their minds from running adrift, and call their thoughts home from useless unattentive roving.Lockeon Education,¶ 176.

The chief advantage which these fictions have over real life is, that their authors are at liberty, though not to invent, yet to select objects, and to cull from the mass of mankind, those individuals upon which the attention ought most to be employed; as a diamond, though it cannot be made, may be polished by art, and placed in such a situation, as to display that luster which before was buried among common stones.

To AFTEREYE  (A'FTEREYE)   v.a.[from after and eye.]To keep one in view; to follow in view. Thou shouldst have made himAs little as a crow, or less, ere leftTo aftereye him.Shakespeare'sCymbeline.

Many complain of neglect who never tried to attract regard.