Preoccupation Quotes - Page 3

• When I today ask myself whence I got the moral courage, for it takes moral courage to make a move (or form a plan) running counter to all tradition, I think I may say in answer, that it was only my intense preoccupation with the problem of the blockade which helped me to do so.

  Aron Nimzowitsch

  Running, Moving, Thinking

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• Prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with GOD Himself.

  Leonard Ravenhill

  Prayer, Blessing, Needs

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• If you work diligently... without saying to yourself beforehand, 'I want to make this or that,' if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Shoes, Gone, Want

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• There was nothing the matter with me that was not also the matter with everyone else. I was not as interesting as I thought I was. My major problem, inadequate or inappropriate love from my parents, was as common as dirt. And one rainy day, all the boring poignancy of these realizations detonated in me like an atom bomb, burning the dead shadow of each former torment or preoccupation onto solid rock. Those silhouettes, that record would remain: the museum where I used to be.

  J. D. Daniels

  Rainy Day, Rocks, Museums

  J. D. Daniels (2017). “The Correspondence”, p.25, Random House

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• Europe has to address people's needs directly and reflect their priorities, not our own preoccupations.

  Peter Mandelson

  Europe, People, Priorities

  "EU trade chief Peter Mandelson". Interview with Gareth Harding, www.upi.com. April 25, 2005.

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• Underneath runs the main current of preoccupation, which is keeping one's nose clean at all times. This means that when things go wrong you have to pass the blame along the line, like pass-the-parcel, till the music stops.

  Tom Stoppard

  Running, Mean, Noses

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• The premonition of death may for many be a stimulus to novelty of experience: the imminence of death serves to sweep away the inessential preoccupations for those who do not flee from the thought of death into triviality.

  David Riesman

  May, Novelty, Triviality

  David Riesman (1955). “Selected essays from Individualism reconsidered”

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• All of us in Quebec - and I mean all of us - have allowed language to become a preoccupation that works to the disadvantage of all of us - and I mean all of us.

  Dick Pound

  Mean, Language, Quebec

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• At 60 the sexual preoccupation, when it hits you, seems sometimes sharper, as if it were an elderly malady, like gout.

  Edmund Wilson

  Elderly, Gout, Sometimes

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• Choice or freedom of choice is just an existential concern. But for photographers, it's a lifetime's preoccupation.

  Marc Riboud

  Choices, Photographer, Existential

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• One of my basic feelings is that the mind, and the heart alike, of the photographer must be dedicated to the glory, the magic, and the mystery of light. The mystery of time, the magic of light, the enigma of reality - and their interrelationships - are my constant themes and preoccupations.

  Clarence John Laughlin

  Heart, Reality, Light

  Clarence John Laughlin, Lafcadio Hearn, Philadelphia Museum of Art (1973). “Clarence John Laughlin: the personal eye”

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• The preoccupation with transition and with surgery objectifies trans people, and we don't get to really deal with the real lived experiences.

  Laverne Cox

  Real, People, Transition

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• What could be a more Canadian way to indulge in the national preoccupation with perceptions - honest, hilarious, huffy or high-minded - of this country and its inhabitants?

  Norman Angell

  Country, Indulge In, Perception

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• I think the French agonise more about being French, I don't think English think about being English that much. I think the Scottish think about being Scottish and the Welsh think about being Welsh, but the English don't really care. But the French think about it all the time, it's an absolute preoccupation.

  Jonathan Meades

  Thinking, Care, Scottish

  Source: thequietus.com

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• The first story I wrote was "Catface" which was later selected for The O. Henry Collection, so that gave me some confidence to try some more. Gathering these stories together was fun, but I realized when I read them that I have certain mental preoccupations and they keep recurring in my stories.

  Arthur Bradford

  Fun, Trying, Together

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

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• Buddhism resonated very powerfully with a lot of my preoccupations.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Buddhism, Very Powerful

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• When I first decided to be a writer, that meant dealing with preoccupations and concerns that took little account of Indian traditions. I saw India's past as part of an antiquity rendered irrelevant by modernity, which with its science, nation states, free enterprises, and consumer societies was supposed to have solved all problems.

  Pankaj Mishra

  Past, India, Littles

  "'The Buddha' & the End of Human Suffering / Pankaj Mishra in Kathmandu, Nepal". Interview with Felix Holmgren, www.livefromplanetearth.org. 2008.

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• I have had, like most women, a lifelong preoccupation with my weight. My first published short story was a love story between an elderly man and a very young morbidity obese woman.

  Lori Lansens

  Men, Elderly, Firsts

  Source: www.elle.com

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• As a fiction writer, that's been a preoccupation of mine: Can you really just close the door and leave the past back there behind you, or is the door going to blow open at some point?

  Dani Shapiro

  Blow, Past, Doors

  "Book Release: Devotion". Interview with Kari Wethington, www.elle.com. January 7, 2010.

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• I think there is a place where self-awareness becomes self-preoccupation if you don't take what you have discovered and bring it to bear on the conditions of the world.

  Marianne Williamson

  Thinking, Self, World

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• I didn't have any close relationship with him because, although [William Edward Burghardt] DuBois may not have been as egocentric - I don't know - he certainly was not the easiest person to approach. I think, certainly, those of us who were younger sort of respected that in terms of his preoccupation with deep thoughts. So, I made no effort to establish any relationship with him. However, he was in and out then.

  Ella Baker

  Thinking, Effort, Deep Thought

  Source: www.crmvet.org

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• I have a very simple mantra and it's this: I want to make black cinema with the power, beauty, and alienation of black music. That's my big goal. The larger preoccupation is how do we force cinema to respond to the existential, political, and spiritual dimensions of who we are as a people.

  Arthur Jafa

  Spiritual, Simple, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• In Liberia, the big challenge that remains for us is job creation. We want young people to work or go to school. That is our main preoccupation right now.

  Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

  Jobs, School, People

  Source: www.irinnews.org

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• I have always taken the view that sometimes war may be justified, as police action can be justified, to protect the weak and vulnerable (a major preoccupation in scripture). But this is an old and difficult question and very wise people take different views.

  N. T. Wright

  Wise, War, Taken

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• Without making any moral judgements whatsoever, one can say that self-indulgence and excessive self-preoccupation are the antithesis of genuine awareness.

  Ronald Rolheiser

  Moral Judgement, Self, Awareness

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