81 Inspirational Focus Quotes

In a world brimming with distractions, finding the ability to focus has become more essential than ever. Whether you're striving for personal growth, pursuing professional goals, or simply seeking clarity in everyday tasks, having a sharp focus can make all the difference. To help you navigate through life’s myriad challenges, we’ve curated a collection of 81 inspirational focus quotes. These quotes are more than mere words; they are powerful reminders of the importance of concentration and the clarity it brings. Dive into this collection to find the motivation and encouragement you need to hone your focus and achieve your aspirations.

1. “Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.” - Joss Whedon

2. “In those days a boy on the classical side officially did almost nothing but classics. I think this was wise; the greatest service we can to education today is to teach few subjects. No one has time to do more than a very few things well before he is twenty, and when we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.” - C.S. Lewis

3. “I didnt pay atteniton to times or distance, instead focusing on how it felt just to be in motion, knowing it wasn't about the finish line but how I got there that mattered.” - Sarah Dessen

4. “...you cannot eat every tadpole and frog in the pond, but you can eat the biggest and ugliest one, and that will be enough, at least for the time being.” - Brian Tracy

5. “Knowing the Techniques of Survival........Our fears and anxieties will often drive us to build impenetrable walls that act like blinders deflecting others and preventing us from seeing who surrounds us. Getting focused to the things that matter are the Key to what has to be to COMPLETE our MISSION. "I Had Every Excuse to Fail but I Chose None" Speak Life!!!(sky)” - Sebastian K. Young

6. “He well knew his mind's natural tendency to be endlessly on a thousand subjects at once, to flit from this to that and to the next thing to no particular purpose--indeed, he called it his "butterfly mind.” - Eric Metaxas

7. “You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don't do too many things wrong.” - Warren Buffett

8. “If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.” - Muriel Spark

9. “Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.” - Helen Hanson

10. “Sometimes, we feel conscious but unable to move our body. The first thing to do is focus in a prayer, then start to wink frequently.By this way, slowly but sure our body can be moved totally by our persistent willpower.” - Toba Beta [Betelgeuse Incident]

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

12. “Among these temperamentally unhappy campers are "reactant" personalities, who focus on what they often wrongly perceive as others' attempts to control them. In one experiment, some of these touchy individuals were asked to think of two people they knew: a bossy sort who advocated hard work and a mellow type who preached la dolce vita. Then, one of the names was flashed before the subjects too briefly to register in their conscious awareness. Next, the subjects were given a task to perform. Those who had been exposed to the hard-driving name performed markedly worse than those exposed to the easygoing name. Even this weak, subliminal attention to an emotional cue that suggested control was enough to get their reactant backs up and cause them to act to their own disadvantage. All relationships involve give-and-take and cooperation, so a person who habitually attends to ordinary requests or suggestions like a bull to a red flag is in for big trouble in both home and workplace.” - Winifred Gallagher

13. “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

14. “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

15. “Because you actually might not know what activities truly engage your attention and satisfy you, he says, it can be helpful to keep a diary of what you do all day and how you feel while doing it. Then, try to do more of what's rewarding, even if it takes an effort, and less of what isn't. Where optimal experience is concerned, he says, "'I just don't have the time' often means 'I just don't have the self-discipline.” - Winifred Gallagher

16. “Your motivations--get that promotion, throw the best parties, run for public office--aren't impersonal abstractions but powerfully reflect who you are and what you focus on. An individual's goals figure prominently in the theories of personality first developed by the Harvard psychologist Henry Murray. According to his successor David McClelland, what Friedrich Nietzsche called "the will to power," which he considered the major driving force behind human behavior, is one of the three basic motivations, along with achievement and affiliation, that differentiate us as individuals.A simple experiment show show these broad emotional motivations can affect what you pay attention to or ignore on very basic levels. When they examine images of faces that express different kinds of emotion, power-oriented subjects are drawn to nonconfrontational visages, such as "surprise faces," rather than to those that suggest dominance, as "anger faces" do. In contrast, people spurred by affiliation gravitate toward friendly or joyful faces.” - Winifred Gallagher

17. “The more choices we have, the greater the need for focus.” - Tom Butler-Bowdon

18. “Such a simplified lifestyle can be truly wonderful - you'll finally have time for the things you really love, for relaxation, for outdoor activities, for exercise, for reading or finding peace and quiet, for the loved ones in your life, for the things you're most passionate about. This is what it means to thrive - to live a life full of the things you want in them, and not more. To live a better quality of life without having to spend and buy and consume.” - Leo Babauta

19. “Michael wasn't on the pool deck, which was hard for me. None of my old Coral Springs teammates were around. Still, that old plane of cement felt like home. I folded my clothes and put them on the bench. I placed my water bottle under my starting block, and I dove in. Once again, I felt that ultimate state of transition, my feet no longer on the ground, my hands not yet in the water.” - Dara Torres

20. “But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind.” - Anne Lamott

21. “Focusing is the great secret of power. If you want to use your full amount of focus, you must close down all other thought and direct your power of generating mental steam toward one outcome.” - Stephen Richards

22. “You cannot run at full throttle when applying your mindset to all of the different things running through your head. Focusing is the key to manifesting your desires.” - Stephen Richards

23. “He said focus. The word focus. I hear angels singing. Everything goes dark except for a light that beams down on Sean. It is a God-given sign- like when people see the Virgin Mary in their grilled cheese, except this isn't religious and I'm actually not a big fan of dairy. I stare at the back of his head. His HEAD. Something I see every day but never really see because it's been there forever. Since the first day of third grade.I crumple up my web. I don't need it. Praise be, the Focus Gods have spoken.I am going to write about Sean Griswold's Head.” - Lindsey Leavitt

24. “Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.” - Edward Abbey

25. “Do not invest time and money into yourself to have others completely destroy it!” - Stephen Richards

26. “Jobs insisted that Apple focus on just two or three priorities at a time. “There is no one better at turning off the noise that is going on around him,” Cook said. “That allows him to focus on a few things and say no to many things. Few people are really good at that.” - Walter Isaacson

27. “The true measure of success is how many times you can bounce back from failure.” - Stephen Richards

28. “If you think you can then you can.” - Stephen Richards

29. “When you fail, that is when you get closer to success.” - Stephen Richards

30. “Doing the tough things sets winners apart from losers.” - Stephen Richards

31. “Happiness is something we reap from the seeds we sow. Plant misery seeds and that us what you reap.” - Stephen Richards

32. “Our way of thinking creates good or bad outcomes.” - Stephen Richards

33. “Before you can successfully make friends with others, first you have to become your own friend.” - Stephen Richards

34. “...on the job there was nothing but the job. You left the shit outside the door. You could always pick it up on your way back out.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

35. “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

36. “Everybody listens to me with a focus on my words. This is a mistake. The words are the vehicle to deliver an idea. Always listen to the idea, it's more valid then any words that I can use.” - Richard Diaz

37. “To be a highflier and a name to conjure with, you must decide your dimension, plan your path, master the moment, focus on the future, determine your degree, push your persistence and leadyour life.” - Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

38. “Listen for the call of your destiny, and when it comes, release your plans and follow.” - Mollie Marti

39. “The first law of attraction is use Cosmic Ordering now.” - Stephen Richards

40. “If you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth, use Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

41. “With Cosmic Ordering you will never eat humble pie again.” - Stephen Richards

42. “Cosmic Ordering is a licence to print money.” - Stephen Richards

43. “The proof of the pudding is in the Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

44. “Believe and achieve with Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

45. “Some people only dream of success… while others wake up and use Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

46. “In the beginning man was poor, then along came Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

47. “The only secret of wealth creation is knowing how to use Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

48. “Human beings are incredibly slow, Cosmic Ordering is incredibly fast!” - Stephen Richards

49. “Twenty years from now you will be disappointed you never used Cosmic Ordering today.” - Stephen Richards

50. “Everybody talks about being rich, Cosmic Ordering does something about it.” - Stephen Richards

51. “A man may fail many times, and then he turns to Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

52. “There are more triumphs than defeats with Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

53. “The universe is full of magical things to be manifested with Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

54. “Riches will come when you follow Cosmic Ordering.” - Stephen Richards

55. “Fear   Only  Constraints  Undeveloped                       Strength                      where your eyes look to within,                      is what your heart will believe.” - Anthony Liccione

56. “Create your own miracles, don't just wait for miracles to happen. Infinite possibilities exist by keeping focus on what you really want.” - Steven Redhead

57. “Be focused in what you do and what you say. There is much noise in the world to detrack you.” - Moazzam Shaikh

58. “To live a more balanced life, glance at the past, live in the present, and focus on the future.” - Todd Stocker

59. “It's not always that we need to do more but rather that we need to focus on less.” - Nathan W. Morris

60. “We spend a lot of time trying to get more and more things, not realizing that those things can never fulfill us. Learn from those who have gone before you - stuff can never satisfy your desires, so focus on THE ONE who can.” - Osayi Osar-Emokpae

61. “I’ve got a question for you… Are you the person who you thought you’d be by now? I know I am not. The fact is that life may not be what you thought it would be by now (If It is, I congratulate you & applaud you) You may feel stuck in a job you don’t like, not making enough money, jobless, or maybe you are in a bad relationship/marriage, or unhappy because you are out of shape…but don’t let that get you down.The key is 2 focus on what you have (Health,Fam,friends etc) instead of what you don’t have. And also in the things that you have done (Finished a Race-College/Got that Diploma/Raise a Family etc) Instead of the things you haven’t done. yetIF where you are now, it’s not where you want to be…know that where you’re going is far more important than where you are now or where you’ve been.Forgive yourself, Accept the current situation & MOVE ON, knowing that from now on you will focus your time & energy on the possibilities & opportunities that lie ahead 4 you in the near future.” - Pablo

62. “Sophia was asked to speak to the students of a local medical school. “Sophia, what do we need to be better doctors?” the students asked. “Doctors,” Sophia said, “need strong stomachs and strong powers of observation.” Then she opened a canister. The putrid smell quickly moved through the classroom. Sophia stuck a finger in the jar, pulled it up, and then licked it. She passed the jar around encouraging each doctor in training to do the same. Each did, and though many felt nauseas, no one got sick. “You all have very strong stomachs,” she said. “But your powers of observation need some work.” “What do you mean?” they asked. “We did just what you did.” “There is one difference,” she replied. “The finger I dipped in the jar was not the finger I licked.” - David W. Jones

63. “Activities such as chanting, bowing, and sitting in zazen are not at all wasted, even when done merely formally, for even this superficial encounter with the Dharma will have some wholesome outcome at a later time. However, it must be said in the most unambiguous terms that this is not real Zen. To follow the Dharma involves a complete reorientation of one's life in such a way that one's activities are manifestations of, and are filled with, a deeper meaning. If it were not otherwise, and merely sitting in zazen were enough, every frog in the pond would be enlightened, as one Zen master said. Dōgen Zenji himself said that one must practice Zen with the attitude of a person trying to extinguish a fire in his hair. That is, Zen must be practiced with an attitude of single-minded urgency.” - Francis Harold Cook

64. “Focus is the soul of success.” - Sandeep Kakkar

65. “Often success goes hand-in-hand with the sum total of sexual activity in your life.” - Stephen Richards

66. “You put yourself where you are, and if you find yourself unsatisfied with how you are, then get yourself out of it.” - Stephen Richards

67. “Your life is in your hands. Only YOU have the capacity to turn it into a rosy path or a thorn filled one. Increase your vibrational output with Cosmic Ordering and your future will be rosy.” - Stephen Richards

68. “Stop harboring grudges against those who have wronged you, it just holds you back when you really want to be in the NOW.” - Stephen Richards

69. “Everyone defends his treasure, and will do so automatically.The real questions are, what do you treasure, and how much do you treasure it? Once you have learned to consider these questions and to bring them into all your actions, you will have little difficulty in clarifying the means. The means are available whenever you ask. You can, however, save time if you do not protract this step unduly. The correct focus will shorten it immeasurably.” - Helen Shucman

70. “Many surround themselves with luminaries, but in so doing they dull their own sparkle. If you want to shine bright, look to the heavens and see how the brightest star always stands apart from those lesser shining stars.” - Stephen Richards

71. “May our eyes focus rightly on Christ ... before the need to please others, before church, and before the busyness of Christian life. Those things will surely have their place, but they will be most valuable if put in their proper position.” - Traci LaRussa

72. “When the zone calls, you must listen. You never know how long being in the zone lasts. It is a cardinal rule - you must take advantage of every second that you are in the zone.” - John Passaro

73. “And now that they have us here, under their control, they've dropped whatever act they had on earth. We're seeing them as they really are.' He dipped his glove into the water and watched as the water turned golden. The air suddenly smelled of citrus. 'Look! It's orange juice!''Josh, focus!''You sound just like Mom or Isis or whatever her name is.” - Michael Scott

74. “Perhaps you have been wondering about how you will win the tournaments of life. This is an important moment of your life. Just know where your goals are. Dress in the jersey of action and enter the game of vision! Work with your talents, skills, and tactics and with determination! Don’t commit any foul; don’t put yourself on an offside position. Be at the right place at the right time. Attack your failures and defend your goals; look up and watch the time because the whistle may blow at any time. Don’t waste the chances you get! Target the goals and with winning in focus, you will be there!” - Israelmore Ayivor

75. “Don't look at the present storm, but look to the Son coming.” - Anthony Liccione

76. “Become your own success story, not someone else's.” - Stephen Richards

77. “Hungry people are always thinking about food; poor people are always thinking about wealth. Obsessive thinking can kill your dreams!” - Stephen Richards

78. “Be on guard. The road widens, and many of the detours are seductive.” - David Foster Wallace

79. “Long before they had ever met, I think this destiny awaited them. They were not like ships passing in the night. It wasn't like they didn't understand each other. They understood each other better than anyone else, and each was focused solely on the other.” - Gen Urobuchi

80. “Don’t compromise your focus by comparing what you are trying to learn to what you already know. Focus in the moment, on what you are trying to learn now.” - Lorii Myers

81. “Own 100 percent of your focus. The most challenging of endurance drills will bring you to a level of optimal mental and physical performance.” - Lorii Myers