Preoccupation Quotes - Page 5

• This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition - an organic coordination of visual elements.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Real, Essence

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• During the course of many years I have observed that a great number of doctors, lawyers, and important businessmen make a habit of visiting a chess club during the late afternoon or evening to relax and find relief from the preoccupations of their work.

  Jose Raul Capablanca

  Doctors, Years, Numbers

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• Walk away from your own preoccupations . . . and see the perishing multitudes.

  K.P. Yohannan

  Missionary, Motto, Missions

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• I'm simply saying that our deepest thoughts, desires and preoccupations manifest themselves in art, whether we intend them to or not. That's what art is for; it's not cerebral, it's emotional.

  Simon Pegg

  Art, Emotional, Desire

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• As photojournalists, we supply information to a world that is overwhelmed with preoccupations and full of people who need the company of images....We pass judgement on what we see, and this involves an enormous responsibility.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Responsibility, People, Judgement

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• It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.

  Mark Rothko

  Mean, Reality, Artist

  Mark Rothko, Christopher Rothko (2006). “The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art”, p.21, Yale University Press

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• One of my major preoccupations is the approximation between what I say and what I do, between what I seem to be and what I am actually becoming.

  Paulo Freire

  Educational, Philosophy, Literature

  Paulo Freire (2000). “Pedagogy of Freedom: Ethics, Democracy, and Civic Courage”, p.88, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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• ...we live in an era of terrible preoccupation with presentation and interpretation, one in which relations between who someone is and what he believes and how he "expresses himself" have been thrown into big time flux.

  David Foster Wallace

  Believe, Eras, Bigs

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• I had been afraid of breast cancer, as I suspect most women are, from the time I hit adolescence. At that age, when our emerging sexuality is our central preoccupation, the idea of disfigurement of a breast is particularly horrifying.

  Geraldine Brooks

  Cancer, Ideas, Age

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• Science has always been my preoccupation and when you think a breakthrough is possible, it is terribly exciting.

  James D. Watson

  Thinking, Break Through, Exciting

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• Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

  Paul Brunton

  Spiritual, Men, Faults

  Paul Brunton (1986). “The Notebooks of Paul Brunton: Practices for the Quest; Relax and Retreat”, Larson Publication

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• And of course, in my writing, there is the constant theme of music, love of, preoccupation with, music. Music is the single thread making my life into a coherency.

  Philip K. Dick

  Writing, Music Love, Thread

  Philip K. Dick (2007). “Vintage PKD”, p.129, Vintage

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• She took kisses like so many coats of paint […] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, ‘She is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.

  Lawrence Durrell

  Beautiful, Kissing, Long

  Lawrence Durrell (1957). “Justine: By Lawrence Durrell”

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• The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Simple, Men, Expression

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton (Part I: On the Creature Called Man, Chapter VII: The War of the Gods and Demons), 1925.

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• The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work.

  Steven Pressfield

  Doe, Mystery, Shut Up

  Steven Pressfield (2002). “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”, p.78, Black Irish Entertainment LLC

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• Politics deserves much praise. Politics is a preoccupation of free men, and its existence is a test of freedom. The praise of free men is worth having, for it is the only praise which is free from either servility or condescension.

  Bernard Crick

  Men, Political, Politics

  "In Defence of Politics".

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• Religion is not a matter of God, church, holy cause, etc. These are but accessories. The source of religious preoccupation is in the self, or rather the rejection of the self. Dedication in the obverse side of self-rejection. Man alone is a religious animal because, as Montaigne points out, it is a malady confined to man, and not seen in any other creature, to hate and despise ourselves.

  Eric Hoffer

  Religious, Hate, Animal

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.

  H. G. Wells

  Religious, Men, People

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.10332, Delphi Classics

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• When a white man in Africa by accident looks into the eyes of a native and sees the human being (which it is the chief preoccupation to avoid), his sense of guilt, which he denies, fumes up in resentment and he brings down the whip.

  Doris Lessing

  Eye, Men, White Man

  The Grass is Singing (1950) ch. 8

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• Instead of building the peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spend a trillion dollars on war since 1946, until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation.

  Daniel Berrigan

  War, Justice, Hatred

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• I am also greatly indebted to Bergson, William James, and John Dewey. One of my preoccupations has been to rescue their type of thought from the charge of anti-intellectualism, which rightly or wrongly has been associated with it.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Type, Rescue, Has Beens

  Alfred North Whitehead (2010). “Process and Reality”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• So go marry someone, provided you're equally yoked and you actually like being with each other. Go get a job, provided it's not wicked. Go live somewhere in something with somebody or nobody. But put aside the passivity and the quest for complete fulfillment and the perfectionism and the preoccupation with the future, and for God's sake start making some decisions in your life. Don't wait for the liver-shiver. If you are seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you will be in God's will, so just go out and do something.

  Kevin DeYoung

  Jobs, Decision, Waiting

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• If you begin with the assumption of freedom, the preoccupation is always how to keep freedom in check, how to bind; But if you begin with the assumption of bondage, the preoccupation is always how to set out the word that frees.

  Gerhard

  Assumption, Bondage, Checks

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• True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior. Preoccupation with unworthy behavior can lead to unworthy behavior. That is why we stress so forcefully the study of the doctrines of the gospel.

  Boyd K. Packer

  Attitude, Stress, Doctrine

  Boyd K. Packer (1998). “The shield of faith”, Bookcraft, Incorporated

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• The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.

  Martin Seligman

  Things In Life, Psychology, Quality

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