Quotes about Attention

When you're kind to people, and you pay attention, you make a field of comfort around them, and you get it back—the Golden Rule meets the Law of Karma meets Murphy's Law.

The Amen is only as good as the attitude. If you are trying to finish up quickly so you can check your cell phone messages, you are missing the chance to spend quiet moments with the giver of life and the eternal, which means you may reap continued feelings of life racing along without you. So as Samuel Beckett admonished us to fail again, and fail better, we try to pray again, and pray better, for slightly longer and with slightly more honesty, breathing more, deeper, and with more attention.

They taught me to pay attention, but not so much attention to my tiny princess mind.

I hoped her life would turn topsy-turvy enough to get her attention. Topsy-turvy is often a symptom for the presence of God—the last become first, the hungry are fed, the obnoxious are welcomed.

A writer is someone on whom nothing is lost

Writing can give you what having a baby can give you: it can get you to start paying attention, can help you soften, can wake you up. But publishing won't do any of those things; you'll never get in that way.

And while everyone has to make a living and show up for family, listening is optional. You have to make a conscious decision to listen harder.

When Pat Holt strings together a list of words not to overuse—"Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally"—she's not being a stickler for formality and grammar. Instead she's reminding us that words matter, that poor word use is just a red flag for someone who wants to ignore you.

Eye contact, all by itself, is enough to throw your lizard brain into a tizzy. Imagine how scary it must be to set out to do something that will get you noticed, or perhaps even criticized.

Here's another way to describe the two axes: One asks, Can you see it? The other wonders, Do you care?

Too many marketers spend most of their time running a hype show, trying to get just a little bigger.

Never make a fuss-it might attract the attention of an enemy tribe.