Attention Quotes

You cannot give your full attention to something, and at the same time resist it.

We would rather speak ill of ourselves than not talk about ourselves at all.

When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what's around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.

I always knew I could hold people's attention and make them laugh every 30 or 40 seconds, and I got approval and attention for that, so the behavior was reinforced. Later, that became an important skill on the street corner.

I don't need to be vindicated, and I don't want attention.

Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.

Great events ever depend but upon a single hair. The adroit man profits by everything, neglects nothing which can increase his chances; the less adroit, by sometimes disregarding a single chance, fails in everything.

Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

No one is listening until you make a mistake.

To find a new word that is accurate and different, you have to be alert for it.

I should never have made my success in life if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever undertaken the same attention and care that I have bestowed upon the greatest.

In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

Where ever you are, be there totally.

Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night's date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn't think of looking at another woman.

There is no good talking to him," said a Dragon-fly, who was sitting on the top of a large brown bulrush; "no good at all, for he has gone away." "Well, that is his loss, not mine," answered the Rocket. "I am not going to stop talking to him merely because he pays no attention. I like hearing myself talk. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have long conversations all by myself, and I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying." "Then you should definitely lecture on Philosophy," said the Dragon-fly.

We despise no source that can pay us a pleasing attention.

The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.

I'm an attention freak. I want all the women in the world, and if I don't get them, I fall to the ground and start kicking my feet.

As you go about your life, don't give 100 percent of your attention to the external world and your mind. Keep some within.

Love is effortless attention.

[E]very job is composed of many small details, any one of which, if overlooked, can create big problems later.

To have your attention in the Now is not a denial of what is needed in your life. It is recognition of what is primary.

That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Look sharply after your own thoughts. They come unlooked for, like a new bird seen on your trees, and, if you turn to your usual task, disappear; and you shall never find that perception again; never, I say-but perhaps years, ages, and I know not what events and worlds my lie between you and its return.

Attention is the beginning of devotion.

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

An amazing realization is in the present moment there is only what is, but there are no problems. And if your attention remains in the Now, you no longer inhabit a world of problems. Challenges you may still face, but they come to you in the space of Now.

Tell me what it is you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride, married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. Instructions for living a life: pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

How’ is always more important that ‘what.’ See if you can give much more attention to the doing than to the result that you want to achieve through it.

A witty saying proves nothing, but saying something pointless gets people's attention.

The easiest way to get 15 minutes of fame is to be rude to somebody.

The prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

If you want to become a better listener, however you need to learn to direct that energy and attention positively by concentrating on the person you're with.

When you are everywhere, you are nowhere. When you are somewhere, you are everywhere.

Its the hinge that squeaks that gets the grease

Attention without feeling is only a report.

A man would rather say evil of himself than say nothing.

And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter, - we need never read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?

The perfect woman perpetrates literature as she perpetrates a small sin: as an experiment, in passing, glancing around to see whether anybody notices--and to make sure that somebody notices.

Just as soon as we notice that someone has to force himself to pay attention when dealing and talking with us, we have a valid demonstration that he does not love us or that he does not love us anymore.

If it's attention you want, don't get involved with a man during play-off season.

So many people trip in front of them because they're looking over there or up ahead.

When you are fully present with everyone you meet, you relinquish the conceptual identity you made for them - your interpretation of who they are and what they did in the past - and are able to interact without the egoic movements of desire and fear. Attention, which is alert stillness, is the key.

When you think about it, attention-deficit order makes a lot of sense. In this country there isn't a lot worth paying attention to.

Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists.

Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with the gift of your attention.

Things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs.

Pay attention. Don't just stagger through the day.

The only thing that can grow is the thing you give energy to.

You are of no advantage to anyone who has your negative attention.

Everyone always noticed Ashley. She was like a flashing neon sign for anyone with an ounce of testosterone.

If you are who you are on stage, people pay attention.

Attention-yes! That's present! And present, you see, makes past and future.

A friend gave me a drug for attention deficit disorder, because he's afflicted, but I'm not. So what happened to me is I suddenly had an extra-long attention span. People would tell me a story, and it would end, and I'd get all mad. "Come on, man, there has to be more to that story."

Each moment of life is only as precious as is our ability to attend to it.

I was always making my friends laugh but I never wanted the attention of the whole classroom.

Not everyone coming to you with a problem wants a solution. They are attached to the attention it brings them.