Henri Nouwen
Theologian, Author
"Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life."
Attention quotes
Attention
2.5K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Khaled Hosseini
Author, Physician
"Attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun."
Mary Oliver
Poet
"Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it."
Drake
Rapper, singer, songwriter
"Hoes want attention, women want respect."
Samuel Adams
Politician
"A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed."
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Attention quotes (page 1 of 124)
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"Be king in your dreams. Make your vow that you will reach that position, with untarnished reputation, and make no other vow to distract your attention."
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"If you're not nervous then you're not paying attention."
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"The liberties of a people depend on their own constant attention to its preservation."
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"Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment."
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"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."
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"Music is an art and art has its own rules. And one of them is that you must pay more attention to it than anything else in the world, if you are going to be true to yourself. And if you don't do it - and you are an artist - it punishes you."
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"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
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"Pay close attention to the particular thoughts you use to deprive yourself of happiness."
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"We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity – the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written."
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"So, let us not be blind to our differences - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved."
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"At best Americans give but a limited attention to history. Too much happens too rapidly, and before we can evaluate it, or exhaust its meaning or pleasure, there is something new to concern us. Ours is the tempo of the motion picture, not that of the still camera, and we waste experience as we wasted the forest."
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"We are so engrossed with the objects, or appearances revealed by the light, that we pay no attention to the light."
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"The sensitiveness claimed by neurotic is matched by their egotism: they cannot abide the flaunting by others of the sufferings to which they pay an even increasing amount of attention in themselves."
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"Why is patience so important?" "Because it makes us pay attention."
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"I don't pay attention to sales because it's not about that for me. It's about the music. Music is all I have."
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"Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners."
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"Gorgeous, amazing things come into our lives when we are paying attention: mangoes, grandnieces, Bach, ponds. This happens more often when we have as little expectation as possible. If you say, "Well, that's pretty much what I thought I'd see," you are in trouble. At that point you have to ask yourself why you are even here. [...] Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time. Let it be. Unto us, so much is given. We just have to be open for business."
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"The true art of memory is the art of attention."
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"I don't want to be the center of attention. My posture has changed. I walk with my head down and shoulders slumped. Suddenly I carry myself as if I'm ashamed of something."
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"Winners don't just learn the fundamentals, they master them. You have to monitor your fundamentals constantly because the only thing that changes will be your attention to them."
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