37 Quotes On Attention And Focus

In today's fast-paced world, the ability to maintain attention and focus is more crucial than ever. Whether you're navigating the challenges of work, pursuing personal passions, or simply trying to stay present in everyday life, staying focused can often feel like an uphill battle. Fortunately, wisdom from those who have mastered the art of concentration can offer some much-needed inspiration. In this curated collection, explore 37 insightful quotes on attention and focus that will motivate you to hone your concentration skills and achieve your goals with clarity and purpose. Dive in to find the words that resonate with you and spark the drive you need to stay on course.

1. “Whenever she turned her steep focus to me, I felt the warmth that flowers must feel when they bloom through the snow, under the first concentrated rays of the sun.” - Janet Fitch

2. “A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world."[Speech upon being awarded the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels (Peace Prize of the German Book Trade), Frankfurt Book Fair, October 12, 2003]” - Susan Sontag

3. “Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

4. “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.” - Julio Cortazar

5. “There are so many attention whores out there, prostituting for people's acknowledgment” - Jason Myers

6. “Television screens saturated with commercials promote the utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales. ” - Neil Postman

7. “Once out of your cradle, you don't focus on the world in the abstract, perceiving things for the first time, but in synchrony with your accumulated knowledge, which enriches and helps define your experience, as well as ensuring its uniqueness.” - Winifred Gallagher

8. “this observation leads Rozin to a stunning conclusion: "Disgust is the basic emotion of civilization.” - Winifred Gallagher

9. “Debriefing-style counseling after a trauma often aggravates a victim's stress-related symptoms, for example, and 4 in 10 bereaved people do better without grief therapy.” - Winifred Gallagher

10. “Where visual artists are concerned, the Baroque sculptor and architect Bernini and the painter and sculptor Picasso were clearly adept at both experiential and instrumental attending, says Tellegen, as is the modern architect Frank Gehry. Choosing a literary example, he says that F. Scott Fitzgerald once admitted to "wrapping one of his romantic flings in cellophane" for later artistic use and notes that "this kind of heartless but honest professionalism is not uncommon among creative people.” - Winifred Gallagher

11. “In a variation on James's recipe for interesting experience--the familiar leavened by the novel--Hobbs's "art of choosing difficulties" requires selecting projects that are "just manageable." If an activity is too easy, you lose focus and get bored. If it's too hard, you become anxious, overwhelmed, and unable to concentrate. Tellingly, one group is distinguished by its zeal for the kind of work that requires you to give it all you've got: high achievers particularly relish taking on risky projects that have only a 50/50 chance of success.” - Winifred Gallagher

12. “Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life. As Hobbs put it, the secret of fulfillment is "to choose trouble for oneself in the direction of what one would like to become.” - Winifred Gallagher

13. “After he wrote The Paradox of Choice, Schwartz got fervent amens from European governments as well as individual readers for insisting that the management of your focus has become one of decision-laden modernity's major challenges. Many behavioral economists and social psychologists also share his concern about what he calls "the consequences of mis-attention.” - Winifred Gallagher

14. “Temperamentally anxious people can have a hard time staying motivated, period, because their intense focus on their worries distracts them from their goals.” - Winifred Gallagher

15. “Anyone who teaches me deserves my respect, honoring and attention.” - Sonia Rumzi

16. “I don't judge people. It blurs out the center of my attention,my focus, myself.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

17. “It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters,” - Amit Ray

18. “The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way.” - Keanu Reeves

19. “The breath of the mind is attention 128” - Joseph Joubert

20. “The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.” - Chip Heath and Dan Heath

21. “Fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention.” - Amy Tan

22. “We’re so used to just glancing at the environment through the eyes of the past that we’re frequently not certain if we are in fact paying attention or if we merely think that we’re paying attention. Dynamic meditation in everyday existence involves the act of truthfully seeing.Many of us have changed some aspect of our appearance only to have this go unnoticed by friends. Perhaps you’ve shaved off a mustache, added a tattoo, or altered your hairstyle, but your acquaintances failed to initially notice. In such a case, your friends were looking at their environment through the eyes of the past instead of actually seeing what was taking place in the present.” - H.E. Davey

23. “An exceedingly confident student would in theory make a terrible student. Why would he take school seriously when he feels that he can outwit his teachers?” - Criss Jami

24. “A man who goes into a restaurant and blatantly disrespects the servers shows a strong discontent with his own being. Deep down he knows that restaurant service is the closest thing he will ever experience to being served like a king.” - Criss Jami

25. “The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.” - Maureen Dowd

26. “Truly? That whole determined, dangerous saunter across the room was for me? In that case, would you mind going back and doing it all over again? Slowly this time, and with feeling.” - Tessa Dare

27. “Attention is a resource as abundant as sunlight. It streams outward all day long whether we choose to tap into it or not. By developing conscious focus of our attention, we learn to harness one of the greatest creative powers available to humankind, one that happens to be freely available within ourselves at all times.” - Scott Edmund Miller

28. “As so many commitments demand your timeOr your shut-eye important be,Your attraction to me must in some way lack,Such a pity to spend time on thee.” - Charlotte M. Liebel

29. “Life is sweet or bitter depending on where your attention is, at that moment.” - George Alexiou

30. “Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.” - Idries Shah

31. “Cassandra, when you want to speak to me, you should say 'Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson.' Then wait until you get my attention.""Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson. Do I have your attention now?” - Pseudonymous Bosch

32. “I’m not a follower. I never have been. But I’ll definitely become someone I’m not for a few hours if it’ll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eye sore and draw attention.” - J.A. Redmerski

33. “Don’t pay attention to those who offer too much.” - Dejan Stojanovic

34. “Boys seek attention, men demand respect.” - Habeeb Akande

35. “Try to forgive by trying to understand how it would feel to be in the other’s shoes. If someone hurts you – ask them - “What hurts you so much that you would do this?” Listen to the answer and try to understand what is valid for them. They may have been fighting for your attention, but no one thinks of themselves as attackers, only defenders! So don’t judge their ways, only set them free by giving them a chance to speak. You may both learn a lot from your kindness and courage in asking for the truth. But even if nothing changes, release it, remember that you both have a right to be who you choose to be. When we make judgements we're inevitably acting on limited knowledge, so ask if you seek to understand, or simply let them be!” - jay woodman

36. “Why are...poor people more ready to share their goods than rich people? The answer is easy: The poor have little to lose; the rich have more to lose and they are more attached to their possessions. Poverty provides a deeper motivation for understanding your neighbors, welcoming others and attending to those who are suffering. I would go so far as to say that poverty helps you understand what happiness is, what serenity is in life.” - Piero Gheddo

37. “What did you say, Gram? About there being no church out here?" "I said that the sky was the roof of my cathedral and the desert was its floor and any time I paid attention, I could feel a higher power all around me.” - Terri Farley