Quotes About Focus

Keep pace with the drummer you hear, however measured or far away.

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.

It is not enought to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

Many an object is not seen, though it falls within the range of our visual ray, because it does not come within the range of our intellectual ray, i.e., we are not looking for it. So, in the largest sense, we find only the world we look for.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

What is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.

Les détails nous empoisonnent la vie. Simplifiez, simplifiez.

In the long run, you hit only what you aim for.

I do believe in simplicity. It is astonishing as well as sad, how many trivial affairs even the wisest thinks he must attend to in a day;…so simplify the problem of life, distinguish the necessary and the real.

Never look back unless ypu are planning to go that way.

No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, [...] compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen?

La mayoría de los hombres, incluso en este país relativamente libre, se afanan tanto por los puros artificios e innecesarias labores de la vida, que no les queda tiempo para cosechar sus mejores frutos.

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.

Still we live meanly, like ants... Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it.

You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.

The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things.

Everywhere the means is erected into the end, and the end itself is forgotten.

To think at all requires a purpose, no matter how vague. The best thinking, however, requires a definite purpose, and the more definite this purpose the more definite will be our thinking. Therefore in taking up any special line of thought, we must first find just what our end or purpose is, and thus get clearly in mind what our problems are.