Quotes About Attention

Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, "delving into the things that lie beneath" and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is to be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To worship it is to keep it from being muddied with turmoil and becoming aimless and dissatisfied with nature—divine and human.

Look in, let not either the proper quality, or the true worth of anything pass thee, before thou hast fully apprehended it.

Es preciso, pues, aprovechar el tiempo, y ello no solo porque cada instante es un paso más que damos hacia la muerte, sino por el hecho de que antes de morir perdemos la capacidad de concebir las cosas y de prestarles la atención que merecen.

What is outside the scope of my mind has absolutely no concern with my mind. Learn this lesson and thou standest erect.

In conversation keep abreast of what is being said, and, in every effort, of what is being done. In the latter see from the first to what end it has reference, and in the former be careful to catch the meaning.

Fritter not away what is left of thy life in thoughts about others, unless thou canst bring these thoughts into

I think Jesus would have said, "It's not about me." During his lifetime, he deflected attention from himself. In an illuminating passage in our earliest gospel, when a man addressed him as "Good Teacher," Jesus responded with, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone."22

Given all of life's ambiguities and the reality of impermanence and suffering, our existence is remarkable, wondrous. It evokes awe and amazement. We need to pay attention. Really pay attention. Lest we become blind to the awe and wonder that fills our days.

Paying attention to our relationship with God matters because we ourselves are ultimately relational. It is not that wr first become selves and then have relationships. Rather, we are constituted by our relationships; they shape and form us. So also paying attention to our relationship with God will shape us.

Faithfulness leads us to pay attention to our relationship to God—through such attention, we become even more deeply centered in God. Trust is the fruit of that deeper centering. It grows as we center more and more in God.

We lived, as usual by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

Ah men, why do you want all this attention? I can write poems for myself, make love to a doorknob if absolutely necessary. What do you have to offer me I can't find otherwise except humiliation? Which I no longer need.

Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

He throws out radiance, it must be reflected sun. Why isn't everyone staring?

I want to see what can be seen, of him, take him in, memorize him, save him up so I can live on the image, later: the lines of his body, the texture of his flesh, the glisten of sweat on his pelt, his long sardonic unrevealing face. I ought to have done that with Luke, paid more attention, to the details, the moles and scares, the singular creases; I didn't and he's fading. Day by day, night by night he recedes, and I become more faithless.

People always forget about prophecies unless they come true.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.

hard to get the full view, of the sky, of anything. But we can do it, a little at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world in gasps.

You didn't need it anyway, it attracted too much attention. Better with only a shadow. Someone wants your shadow.

We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. Nothing

at a time, a quick move of the head, up and down, to the side and back. We have learned to see the world

Like stage magic, knowledge before you knew it took place before your very eyes, but you were looking elsewhere.

I hardly hear them any more because I hardly listen.

It's literature. It's all books. There are good books and bad books. Literary fiction can be bad, and so can sci-fi. Sci-fi can be wonderful and so can literary fiction. As long as it's a good book, who cares? Hold my attention; that's all I ask. Make me believe.