Quotes About Attention

Si la falta de emoción no hubiese despertado mi interés profesional, ahora no recordaría el incidente; en aquel momento no me suscitó ningún sentimiento.

This was enough to incapacitate the patient for the peak experience of sexual pleasure, since the orgasm was made an object of intention, and an object of attention as well, instead of remaining an unintended effect of unreflected dedication and surrender to the partner.

He loved Kennedy and he trusted her, but at the end of the day she was still a spy. A professional perpetrator of deceit and lies. As much as he wanted to believe her, he could never really be sure. He turned his attention back to Baker.

While Bitty's tone was pleasantly concerned, it held that unmistakable Southern belle cattiness that wouldn't escape the attention of anyone familiar with polite social warfare. Three women within hearing stepped back a pace, but made no pretense that they weren't listening to every word. After all, this is the kind of show that makes the tiresome rules of etiquette bearable.

She came into a room; she stood, as he had often seen her, in a doorway with lots of people round her. But it was Clarissa one remembered. Not that she was striking; not beautiful at all; there was nothing picturesque about her; she never said anything specially clever; there she was however; there she was.

I like observing people. I like looking at things.

How was one to lasso her mind, and tether it to this minute, unimportant spot?

Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?

How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it.

Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

To begin with, I ran my eye up and down the page. I am going to get the hang of her sentences first, I said, before I load my memory with blue eyes and brown and the relationship that there may be between Chloe and Roger. There will be time for that when I have decided whether she has a pen in her hand or a pickaxe.

Ma Peter - non importa quanto fosse bella la giornata, e gli alberi e l'erba, e la fanciulla vestita di rosa - Peter non vedeva mai nulla. Se lei glielo chiedeva, si metteva gli occhiali; guardava. Ma era lo stato del mondo che gli interessava: Wagner, la poesia di Pope, il carattere della gente, e i difetti dell'anima di lei.

Caress the detail, the divine detail.

In reading, one should notice and fondle details.

This now-ness is the only reality we know; it follows the colored nothingness of the no-longer and precedes the absolute nothingness of the future. Thus, in a quite literal sense, we may say that conscious human life lasts always only one moment, for at any moment of deliberate attention to our own flow of consciousness we cannot know if that moment will be followed by another.

not to spell very well, but to smell very well

Caress the details, the divine details. In high art and pure science detail is everything.

When we concentrate on a material object, whatever its situation, the act of attention might lead to our sinking involuntarily into the history of that object.

Messages communicated through numbers seldom stick with people

What we look for determines what we see. When we assume that the only way we can create a new market is by disrupting an old one, opportunities for nondisruptive creation can be easily missed. People tend to focus their attention on the core of existing markets and what it would take to disrupt the existing order. This narrows their vision and blinds them to the wealth of nondisruptive market-creating moves they could make.

Attention is focused consciousness, and consciousness is that power of knowing.

Natural focus occurs when the mind is interested. When this occurs, the mind is drawn irresistibly toward the object (or subject) of interest. It is effortless and relaxed, not tense and overly controlled.

Alertness is a measure of how many nows you are alert to in a given period. The result is simple: you become more aware of what is going on as you learn to keep your attention in the now.

Uncomfortable without a standard for right and wrong, the judgmental mind makes up standards of its own. Meanwhile, attention is taken off what is and placed on the process of trying to do things right.