Paying Attention Quotes

“Listen to the trees as they sway in the wind.

Their leaves are telling secrets. Their bark sings songs of olden days as it grows around the trunks. And their roots give names to all things.

Their language has been lost.

But not the gestures.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“I like geography best, he said, because your mountains & rivers know the secret. Pay no attention to boundaries.”
― Brian Andreas, Story People

“They say faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase. Actually, wisdom is seeing the elevator behind it that would have taken you to the top floor.”
― Shannon L. Alder

“Start paying more attention to your digital customer strategy. You don’t want any of your online actions to take a hit on your brand reputation.”
― Pooja Agnihotri, 17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure

“She said things and I nodded. I didn't pay attention. She didn't pay attention to me. We floated through our days in that way.”
― Frederick Barthelme, Elroy Nights

“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.”
― George Alec Effinger, When Gravity Fails

“Prairies are like people. Each one has similar characteristics, but each one is also as unique as a snowflake. When we spend time on different prairies, we discover they all have their own quirks, individuality, and charm.”
― Cindy Crosby, The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction

“And by experiencing prairie---over the four seasons, and at various times of day, in all weathers---you develop a heightened sense of awe and wonder that will spill over into every other area of your life.”
― Cindy Crosby, The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction

“I began to think that there was something awesome about my timing. How was it that, at the exact moment of my stopping, such incredible things were happening? It took me longer than I am prepared to admit to realize that such things were always happening. It was only that I was finally paying attention.”
― Mark Epstein, Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness

“Vagueness is the kingdom of the devil and it is as such on purpose." - On Vagueness”
― Lamine Pearlheart

“When you pay attention, you prop the door of your soul ajar to welcome the unexpected and the uncontrolled... . You can't access your interior landscape by banging down a closed door; you can pencil it in as an appointment on your calendar. Paying attention is a habit forming mind-set that comes with repetition and with intention. You give yourself permissiong to "do nothing." You create quiet spaces. You open a door.”
― Cindy Crosby, Chasing Dragonflies: A Natural, Cultural, and Personal History

“When you pay attention to your inner voice, even if doesn't sound rational, you may live some of the most important experiences of your life.”
― Diana-Maria Georgescu, THE UNSTOPPABLE THIRST : El Camino de Santiago de Compostela An Alchemic Path Towards The Inner Self

“Mindfulness has to do with waking up and living in harmony with oneself and with the world. It is examining who we are, constantly questioning our views of the world and our place in it, while cultivating appreciation for the fullness of each moment we are alive. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. It is empowering as well, because paying attention in this way opens channels to deep reservoirs of creativity, intelligence, imagination, clarity, determination, choice, and wisdom within us.”
― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“She listens to him with great intensity because she is paying no attention to him at all.”
― Joseph Heller, Something Happened

“One thing a Soviet upbringing taught you was to pay attention.”
― Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Panic in a Suitcase

“Whether we’re eating or working or meditating or listening or talking, the reason that we’re here in this world at all is to study ourselves. In fact, it has been said that studying ourselves provides all the books we need.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

“One question that I often get asked is how to overcome writer's block. And the funny thing is, I overcome it, by not overcoming it. I think it’s okay to not write. I think it’s okay not to talk, not to make, not to create, not to produce, produce, produce. How can we listen to the world if we are always talking to the world?”
― Ada Limon

“If you watch and pay attention, good or bad, people always reveal themselves.”
― Akiroq Brost

“The presence of mind is unjustified in the absence of thought.”
― Martin Uzochukwu Ugwu

“Never hurry, time is worth billion dollars. Pay respect to it.”
― Aabid Ahmed

“The big things always seem to take care of themselves. It's the little things you need to pay attention to...”
― Cynthia Newberry Martin, Tidal Flats

“These are all the street signs for this area but he keeps moving them around at night so the only people who aren't lost all the time are the children who never pay attention to signs anyway.”
― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True

“It is not what you first think. There is no effort of will, no firm resolve in the face of this thing called living. There is only paying attention to the quiet each morning, while you hold your cup in the cool air & then that moment you choose to spread your love like a cloth upon the table & invite the whole day in again.”
― Brian Andreas, Theories of Everything

“If to feel is to be unreliable
don't listen to us
if to be in pain is to be predictable
embittered bullying
then don't listen to us
If we're in danger of mistaking
our personal trouble for the pain on the streets
don't listen to us”
― Adrienne Rich, Your Native Land, Your Life

“Some men ogle, some men look. The first makes us bristle, and the second makes us melt, and men are at an utter loss knowing the difference. But we do, and we know it an once.”
― Kate Quinn, The Huntress

“It is said of the Dalai Lama that when he stops to talk to you, for that moment, he makes you feel that you are the most important thing in his life, you have his full attention.”
― Eric Overby, Legacy

“I had never met a misogynist before. I could tell Marco was a woman-hater, because in spite of all the models and TV starlets in the room that night he paid attention to nobody but me. Not out of kindness or even curiosity, but because I'd happened to be dealt to him, like a playing card in a pack of identical cards.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Experience can birth skill if you are aware of how your mind reacts to situations. Practice watching your mind when everything is fine, and it can help you to keep calm when problems arise.”
― Eric Overby

“It turns out poetry does, in fact, do the thing I want it to do… it helps me return to the world, to experience it, to pay attention.”
― Ada Limon

“It had something to do with paying attention and the ability to choose what I paid attention to, and to be aware of that choice, the fact that it’s a choice… That there were depths to me that were not bullshit or childish but profound, and were not abstract but actually much realer than my clothes or self-image, and that blazed in an almost sacred way… and that these realest, most profound parts of me involved not drives or appetites but simple attention, awareness, if only I could stay awake…”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King