The Never Ending List of Quotations
That Support the Value of Awakened Attention
Contact me if you have one that belongs on this list and I will send you a copy of my book, Ruthless Words: Unsentimental Quotations From The World's Wisdom Sources in ebook format.
Understanding and managing attention is now the single
most important determinant of business success.
~ Davenport and Beck, The Attention Economy
Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well,
and nothing can be well done without attention."
~ Earl of Chesterfield
To control attention means to control experience,
and therefore the quality of life.
How much stress we experience
depends more on how well we control attention,
than on what happens to us.
~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow
So now we're overwhelmed, underfulfilled, seeking meaningful connections. . . .
Now we long for a quality of life that comes in meaningful connections to friends,
colleagues, family that we experience with full-focus attention on relationships, etc.
The next aphrodisiac is committed full-attention focus. . . .
experiencing this engaged attention is to feel alive.
~ Linda Stone
Attention is the cutting, burning sword, and our
practice is to use that sword as much as we can.
All practice aims to increase our ability to be attentive,
not just in meditation but in every moment of life.
~ Charlotte Joko Beck, Ordinary Magic
When attention is impaired, it detracts from everything we do,
and when it is well focused, it enhances everything we do.
~ Alan Wallace, The Attention Revolution
Today's business are headed for disaster -
unless they can overcome
the dangerously high attention deficits
that threaten to cripple today's workplace.
~ Davenport & Beck, The Attention Economy
Attention is the most precious commodity in the world today,
and when you’ve got it, you’d better use it effectively.
~ Perry Marshall
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again,
is the very root of judgment, character, and will. . . .
An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
~ William James
Attention is the one principle on which we can rely.
We meet every problem encountered in practice in the same way:
do the practice and bring attention to what arises in experience.
~ Ken McLeod - Waking Up To Your Life
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its
recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.
~ the late Nobel laureate economist, Herbert Simon
In the power of fixing the attention
lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.
~ Robert Hall
Permit me to say without reservation that if all people were attentive,
if they would undertake to be attentive every moment of their lives,
they would discover the world anew.
They would suddenly see that the world is entirely different
from what they had believed it to be.
~ Jacques Lusseyran
The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass,
it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
~ Henry Miller
Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are.
~ Jose Ortega y Gasset
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
~ Samuel Johnson
Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
~ Henry David Thoreau
The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest.
~ Simone Weil
Give whatever you are doing and whoever you are with
the gift of your attention.
~ Jim Rohn
Everyone I know has attention deficit,
and they say it with great pride.
It’s a bad time to be right.
~ Joni Mitchell
Attention makes the genius; all learning, fancy, and science depend upon it.
Newton traced back his discoveries to its unwearied employment.
It builds bridges, opens new worlds, and heals diseases;
without it taste is useless and the beauties of literature are unobserved.
~ Robert Aris Willmott
The quality of one’s life depends on the quality of attention.
Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life.
~ Deepak Chopra
Just being awake, alert, attentive is no easy matter.
I think it is the greatest spiritual challenge that we face.
~ Diana L. Eck
To see the preciousness of all things,
we must bring our full attention to life.
~ Jack Kornfield, A Path With Heart
Attention is the intention to live without reservation in the here-and-now.
~ Timothy Miller
For lack of attention
a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
~ Evelyn Underhill
Just remember that those things that get attention flourish.
~ Victoria Moran
Attention is the most basic form of Love
~ John Tarrant, The Light Inside The Dark
One day a man of the people said to the Zen master Ikkyu:
“Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?”
Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.”
“Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?”
Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.”
“Well,” remarked the man rather irritably,
“I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.”
Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running:
“Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Half angered, the man declared: “What does that word attention mean anyway?”
And Ikkyu answered, gently: “Attention means attention.”
The greatest gift you can give another is the purity of your attention.
~ Richard Moss
Genius is nothing but continued attention.
~ Claude Adrien Helvetius
You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one.
Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own.
It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.
~ Paulo Coelho (Thanks Sattva)
Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat.
Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake.
He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.
~ Chuck Palahniuk
The best way to forget ones self is to look at the world with attention and love.
~ Red Auerbach
Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.
~ Richard Whately
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries,
it has been owing more to patient attention than to any other talent.
~ Isaac Newton
Creative people are all there, totally immersed,
fascinated and absorbed in the present,
in the current situation, in the here-now,
with the matter-in-hand.
~ Abraham Maslow
I never knew any man cured of inattention.
~ Jonathan Swift
As the gardener, by severe pruning, forces the sap of the tree into one or two
vigorous limbs, so should you stop off your miscellaneous activity and
concentrate your force on one or a few points.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
* 2008 All Rights Reserved.
Aaron McNaught, aka "The Wake Up Guy", is the author of five books, a Life Coach and Transformational Speaker who practically owns the term. (Google "Transformational Speaker" in quotes and see for yourself). Aaron is known for his demonstration of awakeness and has committed his life to bringing light into the world.
For more info about books, speaking engagements, retreats or coaching services, call 403.346.4882 or use the contact form in the top right corner of every page.
