21 Quotes Tagged: distraction

...He who's distracted answers clumsily.

In a strange way, I envied the quality of Morrie's time even as I lamented its diminishing supply. Why did we bother with all the distractions we did? .. give up days and weeks of our lives, addicted to someone else's drama.

"Jane Austen never did marry. Why doesthat statement call for such reflexive pity? It carries a diferent meaning if we follow it up: Jane Austen never did marry, and therefore she was given the time and perspective to produce books as well-written as those by anyone who ever lived."

-David Whyte

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in the thick of thin things.

Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

We are always falling in love or quarreling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.

If our state were really happy, we should not need to take our minds off it in order to make ourselves happy.

Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted — processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs.

A person who is another man's slave is better than one who is a slave to lust.

At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.

"The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

People won't admit it, they're too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They can't see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That there's always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness.
The black and the black and the black.

The disease of the hypochondriac consists in this: that certain bodily sensations do not so much indicate a really existing disease in the body as rather merely excite apprehensions of its existence: and human nature is so constituted – a trait which the animal lacks – that it is able to strengthen or make permanent local impressions simply by paying attention to them, whereas an abstraction – whether produced on purpose or by other diverting occupations – lessen these impressions, or even effaces them altogether.

As a species, we haven’t evolved to plan 20 years into the future. As a rule, our decision-making is myopic, shortsighted, and lacks imagination. We’re heavily incentivized to seek rewards in the present, which can greatly cost our long-term Future Selves.

[If you don't] think and strategize long term, [you'll be distracted by the short-term.]
You’ll be caught up by endless distractions throughout your day.
Your decisions will be myopic.
You’ll cost your Future Self greatly, putting them deeper in debt in all ways.

"Oh, don't go on like that!" cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!"
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she asked.
"That's that way it's done," the Queen said with great decision: "nobody can do two things at once, you know."