Distraction Quotes - Page 27

• Banish, therefore, from thy heart the distractions of earth and turn thine eyes to spiritual joys, that thou mayest learn at last to repose in the light of the contemplation of God.

  Albertus Magnus

  Spiritual, Eye, Heart

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• What a blessing 'terrorism' is for the state! It's the ideal distraction from the day-to-day reality of the state's chief activity: wringing from its subjects the wealth they produce. Last September (2001) a handful of fanatics, armed only with box-cutters, provided a new rationale for the trillion -dollar swindle. A bonanza! I don't know what these 'terrorists' thought they were achieving: Making the infidel respect Allah? If so, they were wrong. You might as well try to make the U.S. government respect the U.S. Constitution.

  Joseph Sobran

  Blessing, Reality, Government

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• Don't puzzle the mind with too many inquiries. One finds it difficult to put one single thing into practising, but dares invite distraction by filling the mind with too many things.

  Sarada Devi

  Mind, Inquiry, Filling

  "Women Saints of East and West". Book by Swami Ghanananda, June 1, 1979.

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• I love '80s happy music. I love Cyndi Lauper and Madonna, and the idea of making music that's about people celebrating fun. I spent my late adolescence in New York and I used to go to a lot of gay clubs. The music there was always just about love and connection and celebrating life. I think, for people going through something really hard, to go to a place where you can let loose and listen to music as a distraction, that's about a better place, a better way of life - that's where all the attraction lies.

  Halsey

  Fun, Lying, Gay

  "Halsey: I lost a sense of who I was". Interview with Mark Savage, www.bbc.com. June 27, 2017.

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• The first thing I'd say is stop paying such attention to Trump's tweets. They're a total distraction. I think we should instead be carefully watching the actions of groups like Freedom Partners, Chamber of Commerce, the Koch's big donor operation. The Club for Growth is another part of this, and Americans for Prosperity on the ground.

  Nancy MacLean

  Thinking, Growth, Attention

  Source: www.salon.com

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• Cool is spent. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. When advertisers and pundits hoard a word, you know it's time to retire from it. To move on. I want to suggest, therefore, that we begin to avoid cool now. Cool is a trick to get you to buy garments made by sweatshop laborers in Third World countries. Cool is the Triumph of the Will. Cool enables you to step over bodies. Cool enables you to look the other way. Cool makes you functional, eager for routine distraction, passive, doped, stupid.

  Rick Moody

  Country, Stupid, Moving

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• Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.

  Nhat Hanh

  Meditation Practice, Silence, Understanding

  Thich Nhat Hanh (2008). “Present Moment Wonderful Moment: Mindfulness Verses for Daily Living: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.41, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Usually, when the distractions of daily life deplete our energy, the first thing we eliminate is the thing we eliminate is the thing we need the most: quiet, reflective time. Time to dream, time to contemplate what's working and what's not, so that we can make changes for the better.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Inspirational, Dream, Energy

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• Creation is in part merely the business of forgoing the great and small distractions.

  E. B. White

  Creation

  E.B. White (2011). “Here is New York”, p.25, New York Review of Books

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• Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.

  Blaise Pascal

  Misery, Console

  "The Mind on Fire: Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent".

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• War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.

  Francesca Lia Block

  War, Moments, Illusion

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• It was like noticing the sun. You couldn't help but see it, to turn to face the heat of it, to bask in the glory of it. But often when the sun is high in the sky, the moon is up there, too. A dim memory of what she will be in the night, but there, nonetheless, dim and misty, hard and white. At night, there is only the moon, the sun is nowhere to be seen. There are no distractions when the moon rules the sky.

  Laurell K. Hamilton

  Memories, Moon, Night

  Laurell K. Hamilton (2010). “Cerulean Sins”, p.275, Hachette UK

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• I imagine that one of the biggest troubles with colleges is there are too many distractions, too much panty-raiding, fraternities, and boola-boola and all of that.

  Malcolm X

  College, Too Much, Trouble

  Malcolm X (2015). “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, p.207, Ballantine Books

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• To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Memories, Dark, Hysteria

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• It is this nothingness (in solitude) that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something. The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The wisdom of the desert is that the confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and unconditionally to the Lord Jesus Christ.

  Henri Nouwen

  Running, Jesus, Believe

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• Anthony: Now lower your dress a little- Roslynn: Anthony! Anthony: This is no time for offended modesty... You're the distraction. Roslynn: Och, well, in that case. Anthony: That's quite low enough, my dear... Roslynn: I was only trying to help, Anthony: Commendable, but we want the chap to ogle you, not bust his breeches.

  Johanna Lindsey

  Trying, Dresses, Want

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• But no matter how much planning you do, one tiny miscalculation, one moment of distraction, can end it all in an instant.

  Jeannette Walls

  Matter, Tiny, Planning

  Jeannette Walls (2010). “Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• My only passions were books and music. As you might guess, I led a lonely life… Not that I knew what I wanted in life - I didn’t. I loved reading novels to distraction, but didn’t write well enough to be a novelist; being an editor or a critic was out, too, since my tastes ran to the extremes. Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I decided, not part of your work or study. That’s why I didn’t study literature

  Haruki Murakami

  Lonely, Book, Reading

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• The more you pursue distractions, the less effective any particular distraction is, and so I'd had to up various dosages, until, before I knew it, I was checking my e-mail every ten minutes, and my plugs of tobacco were getting ever larger, and my two drinks a night had worsened to four, and I'd achieved such deep mastery of computer solitaire that my goal was no longer to win a game but to win two or more games in a row--a kind of meta-solitaire whose fascination consisted not in playing the cards but in surfing the streaks of wins and losses.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Loss, Winning, Night

  Jonathan Franzen (2012). “Farther Away: Essays”, p.16, Macmillan

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• We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

  Neil Gaiman

  Children, Reading, Tired

  Neil Gaiman (2016). “The View from the Cheap Seats: Selected Nonfiction”, p.14, HarperCollins

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• I am disturbed when I see the majority of so-called Christians having such little understanding of the real nature of the faith they profess. Faith is a subject of such importance that we should not ignore it because of the distractions or the hectic pace of our lives.

  William Wilberforce

  Christian, Real, Understanding

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• Electronic culture created soulless replacements for connective rituals- television supplanted tribal legends told by the fire; 'fast food' consumed in distraction took the place of a shared meal. We substituted matter for Mater (feminine principle), money for mother's milk, objects for emotional bonds.

  Daniel Pinchbeck

  Mother, Emotional, Fire

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• After three elections, voters finally caught on that Obama's faults were not in the stars, but in himself. They apparently tired of the usual distractions from a dismal presidential record.

  Victor Davis Hanson

  Stars, Tired, Presidential

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• There is no need to believe or disbelieve your thoughts - just don't enter anything. They don't distract you - you get distracted. Nothing exists in itself as a distraction - it is you who get distracted. Why?

  Mooji

  Believe, Inspiration, Practice

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• One of the problems we have is that we cannot just be content to admire and enjoy, we have to possess and feel we own what we see. That can become for many of us an addiction which adds a complication to our life and takes away our peace of mind. Craving things becomes after a while a serious distraction and an obsession.

  Joseph Girzone

  Addiction, Mind, Serious

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