Concentration Quotes

“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
― Susan Sontag

“Those who pray for your downfall are concentrating negative thoughts towards you, without taking cognisance of the slippery ground in which they are standing, which could lead to their downfall.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“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, A Far Cry from Kensington

“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 Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“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

“Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“When you fully focus your mind,
you make others attracted to you.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident: Insiden Bait Al-Jauza

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson LL.D. Vol 3

“The erotic state – again, a mixture of concentration and spontaneity – is a hypnoidal state, probably the most powerful kind that we are capable of experiencing, and it is in this condition that unexpected regions of the self are revealed, as the majority of people know from experience.”
― Peter Redgrove, The Black Goddess and the Unseen Real: Our Uncommon Senses and Their Common Sense

“It is one of the unexpected disasters of the modern age that our new unparalleled access to information has come at the price of our capacity to concentrate on anything much. The deep, immersive thinking which produced many of civilization's most important achievements has come under unprecedented assault. We are almost never far from a machine that guarantees us a mesmerizing and libidinous escape from reality. The feelings and thoughts which we have omitted to experience while looking at our screens are left to find their revenge in involuntary twitches and our ever-decreasing ability to fall asleep when we should.”
― Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion

“If you really want to focus on something, says Castellanos, the optimum amount of time to spend on it is ninety minutes. "Then change tasks. And watch out for interruptions once you're really concentrating, because it will take you twenty minutes to recover.”
― Winifred Gallagher, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life

“The power to concentrate was the most important thing. Living without this power would be like opening one’s eyes without seeing anything.”
― Haruki Murakami , The Elephant Vanishes

“Something amazing happens when the rest of the world is sleeping. I am glued to my chair. I forget that I ever wanted to do anything but write. The crowded city, the crowded apartment, and the crowded calendar suddenly seem spacious. Three or four hours pass in a moment; I have no idea what time it is, because I never check the clock. If I chose to listen, I could hear the swish of taxis bound for downtown bars or the soft saxophone riffs that drift from a neighbor's window, but nothing gets through. I am suspended in a sensory deprivation tank, and the very lack of sensation is delicious.”
― Anne Fadiman, At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays

“INTEREST. Here is the key to the whole thing. If and when you are truly interested in what you are doing, or are about to do, then you will center your attention on it with little or no effort, and almost irrespective of the attendant conditions.”
― Ralph Alfred Habas, The Art of Self-Control

“Concentration comes out of a combination of confidence and hunger.”
― Arnold Palmer

“Most of the time, you’ll concentrate just on your website but when you take your focus off of it, you’ll realize that there’s more to a business than that.”
― Pooja Agnihotri, 17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure

“Not all activities are equal in this regard. Those that involve genuine concentration—studying a musical instrument, playing board games, reading, and dancing—are associated with a lower risk for dementia. Dancing, which requires learning new moves, is both physically and mentally challenging and requires much concentration. Less intense activities, such as bowling, babysitting, and golfing, are not associated with a reduced incidence of Alzheimer’s. (254)”
― Norman Doidge

“Turn your actions into concentrated practices.”
― Belsebuub

“When your drive is moving your purpose, focus must hold the wheels else your might miss the way. And do you know what that means? Avoid Crash!!!. Stay focused!”
― Israelmore Ayivor

“Just as there’s usually a space or interval between people passing on the street, even if it sometimes seems very small, a space also exists between thoughts. In your meditation, see if you can perceive this gap between thoughts. What is it, and does it belong to the realm of time? If it does not, then it’s unborn and undying, beyond all conditioning, which is a psychological carry-over from the past to the present.

Whatever thoughts or internal conflicts come up—do nothing. Do not try to force them to cease or change. And don’t “do nothing” to still the mind, quiet fears, or resolve conflicts—all of this is doing something. It only leads to more struggling and prevents you from seeing the actual nature of thought and internal conflict. Genuine attention has no motive.

This observation or listening doesn’t involve effort. Effort merely distracts you from what’s taking place in the instant. A kind of concentration exists that’s not forced. We’ve all experienced listening or paying attention to something we truly enjoyed. At that moment, was effort required for concentration to take place?”
― H.E. Davey, Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation

“Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash.”
― Tim Wu, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness and the happiness of others.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Dream Big!: See Your Bigger Picture!

“Maximize the time you have through hard work, concentration and research”
― Sunday Adelaja

“The mind does some of its best wandering when the body’s moving forward. This is true on a bike, or on foot, or on a plane, train, or in an automobile, anything. There’s just something about steady onward motion that’s uniquely conducive to shedding any hang-ups and inviting real mental latitude. And, it seems, conversely, the mind is best at plunging forward, at submitting itself to something and following a fixed path, when the body is stationary. In a quiet room between sixty-eight and seventy-four degrees, wearing clothes that are snug but comfortable, sitting upright. Free of any distraction. Unlike out here, the room has no exigencies, so the mind makes up its own. Work, it says. Or watch, read. Dedicate me to something specific. A mind narrows in on that thing then moves resolutely toward it, doing its best to ward off anything that might interrupt or alter its course; thought is a train, consciousness a stream…”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“Maximum mental energy' had never been Kevin's strong point.”
― Colin Dexter, The Daughters of Cain

“The ultimate happiness and satisfaction come from the attainment of self-knowledge.”
― Shiva Negi

“You will get what you focus on your consciousness.”
― Shiva Negi

“When I am identifying an objective, the summit is everything. I wouldn't make it up otherwise. I'm not a superman; I'm just mentally capable of concentrating on the end point.

Once this has been achieved, I need a new task, a new idea, a new project. I've been lucky so far - I've always been able to get myself motivated for the next new thing. The challenges I set myself are age-related.”
― Reinhold Messner, My Life at the Limit

“Everyone who concentrates all day, in the evening needs to let the half-wit out for a walk. 76”
― Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty

“What I call innocence is the spirit's unself-conscious state at any moment of pure devotion to any object. It is at once a receptiveness and total concentration.”
― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek