Quotes About Attention

When things break down, what has been ignored rushes in. When things are no longer specified, with precision, the walls crumble, and chaos makes its presence known. When we've been careless, and let things slide, what we have refused to attend to gathers itself up, adopts a serpentine form, and strikes--often at the worst possible moment. It is then that we see what focused intent, precision of aim and careful attention protects us from.

Say what you mean, so that you can find out what you mean. Act out what you say, so you can find out what happens. Then pay attention. Note your errors. Articulate them. Strive to correct them. That is how you discover the meaning of your life. That will protect you from the tragedy of your life. How could it be otherwise?

With careful searching, with careful attention, you might tip the balance toward opportunity and against obstacle sufficiently so that life is clearly worth living, despite its fragility and suffering.

How could the nature of man ever reach its full potential without challenge and danger? How dull and contemptible would we become if there was no longer reason to pay attention? Maybe God thought His new creation would be able to handle the serpent, and considered its presence the lesser of two evils.

Sometimes, it will ignore me completely, because it's a cat.

Genuine conversation is exploration, articulation and strategizing. When you're involved in a genuine conversation, you're listening, and talking—but mostly listening. Listening is paying attention. It's amazing what people will tell you if you listen. Sometimes if you listen to people they will even tell you what's wrong with them. Sometimes they will even tell you how they plan to fix it. Sometimes that helps you fix something wrong with yourself.

When you're involved in a genuine conversation, you're listening, and talking—but mostly listening. Listening is paying attention. It's amazing what people will tell you if you listen.

And maybe when you are going for a walk and your head is spinning a cat will show up and if you pay attention to it then you will get a reminder for just fifteen seconds that the wonder of Being might make up for the ineradicable suffering that accompanies it. Pet a cat when you encounter one on the street.

There is another, closely allied form of conversation, where neither speaker is listening in the least to the other. Instead, each is using the time occupied by the current speaker to conjure up what he or she will say next, which will often be something off-topic, because the person anxiously waiting to speak has not been listening.

On Facebook and other forms of social media, therefore, you signal your so-called virtue, telling everyone how tolerant, open and compassionate you are, and wait for likes to accumulate.

Realization is dawning. Instead of playing the tyrant, therefore, you are paying attention. You are telling the truth, instead of manipulating the world.

The vital process of socialization prevents much harm and fosters much good. Children must be shaped and informed, or they cannot thrive. This fact is reflected starkly in their behavior: kids are utterly desperate for attention from both peers and adults because such attention, which renders them effective and sophisticated communal players, is vitally necessary.

No one finds a match so perfect that the need for continued attention and work vanishes (and, besides, if you found the perfect person, he or she would run away from ever-so-imperfect you in justifiable horror).

partir de ese punto, desarrollé mis principales conclusiones morales. Apunta hacia arriba. Presta atención. Arregla lo que puedas arreglar. No seas arrogante. Esfuérzate por ser humilde, porque el orgullo totalitario se manifiesta en la intolerancia, la opresión, la tortura y la muerte.

Living things die, after all, without attention. Life is indistinguishable from effortful maintenance.

I was suspended in mid- air, clinging to a chandelier, many stories above the ground, directly under the dome of a massive cathedral. The people on the floor below were distant and tiny. There was a great expanse between me and any wall— and even the peak of the dome itself. I have learned to pay attention to dreams, not least because of my training as a clinical psychologist.

We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically. No currency has a value that exceeds it. Children, adults, and societies wither on the vine in its absence. To have others attend to what you find important or interesting is to validate, first, the importance of what you are attending to, but second, and more crucially, to validate you as a respected center of conscious experience and contributor to the collective world.

Proper discipline requires effort -- indeed, is virtually synonymous with effort. It is difficult... ...to pay careful attention to children. ...to figure out what is wrong and what is right and why ...to formulate just and compassionate strategies of discipline and to negotiate their application with others deeply involved in a child's care

Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good.

Without careful attention, culture itself tilts toward corruption.

Things fall apart: this is one of the great discoveries of humanity. And we speed the natural deterioration of great things through blindness, inaction and deceit. Without attention, culture degenerates and dies, and evil prevails.

It was from this that I drew my fundamental moral conclusions. Aim up. Pay attention. Fix what you can fix. Don't be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance, oppression

But success makes us complacent. We forget to pay attention. We take what we have for granted. We turn a blind eye. We fail to notice that things are changing, or that corruption is taking root. And everything falls apart. Is that the fault of reality—of God? Or do things fall apart because we have not paid sufficient attention?

We only see what we aim at. The rest of the world (and that's most of it) is hidden. If we start aiming at something different—something like "I want my life to be better"—our minds will start presenting us with new information, derived from the previously hidden world, to aid us in that pursuit.