Be Attentive Quotes

Like Abraham, as we embark on our own journey, have a lil faith, take the imparted wisdoms from our parents/teachers, go forward and be attentive always to the quiet voice of your heart ~ Daniel Gottlieb

Be attentive, feel nothing in vain, measure and compare: this is the whole law of philosophy. ~ Georg C. Lichtenberg

One of the best ways to understand how filters shape our individual experience is to think in terms of our information diet. As sociologist danah boyd said in a speech at the 2009 Web 2.0 Expo: Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they're rare in nature ... In the same way, we're biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we're not careful, we're going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We'll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole. ~ Eli Pariser

To an omniscient being, nothing in all of Creation can be original, fashionable, or even distinct, as every event, thought, action, adventure and discovery is occurring simultaneously in one stretched-out moment. To be omniscient means to have never felt even the slightest twang of curiosity, for there can be no unexpected twists if every outcome to every drama and experiment is already known. Without the capacity for curiosity it is, therefore, impossible for the omniscient being to be interested in anything, let alone be attentive to His own pleasure, as pleasure is inaccessible if all of Creation is, from His great perspective, perfectly flat and of a uniform temperature. ~ John Zande

Sonnet of Fidelity
Above all to my love I'll be attentive
First and always with care and so much
That even when facing the greatest enchantment
By love be more enchanted my thoughts.
I want to live it through in each vain moment
And in its honor I'll spread my song
And laugh my laughter and cry my tears
When you are sad or when you are content.
And thus when later comes looking for me
Who knows the death anxiety of the living
Who knows the loneliness end of all lovers
I'll be able to say to myself of the love I had :
Be not immortal since it is flame
But be infinite while it lasts. ~ Vinicius De Moraes

Be assertive, be attentive and be creative. The world needs people who can add value. ~ Gift Gugu Mona

If you feel pain, be attentive to it; don't do anything. Attention is the great sword; it cuts everything. You simply pay attention to the pain. ~ Osho

It is with passion and dedication that I will be attentive to the needs of women and fight relentlessly for their rights ~ Claudia Cardinale

Given the historical power differential between blacks and whites, blacks are required to be attentive to the way their white counterparts see themselves in relation to people of color if they want to survive and even thrive. ~ James A. Forbes

It's really important to be attentive to the people who have less - who are less fortunate than you are. ~ Paul Newman

Nothing is more pathetic than people who run around in circles, "delving into the things that lie beneath" and conducting investigations into the souls of the people around them, never realizing that all you have to do is to be attentive to the power inside you and worship it sincerely. To ~ Marcus Aurelius

Meditation is a state of mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it. And no one can teach you how to be attentive. If any system teaches you how to be attentive, then you are attentive to the system, and that is not attention. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To be aware of inattention is to be attentive. Complete attention is love. It alone can see, and the seeing is the doing. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think about Rilke, who said that it's the questions that move us, not the answers. As a writer I believe it is our task, our responsibility, to hold the mirror up to social injustices that we see and to create a prayer of beauty. The questions serve us in that capacity. Pico Iyer describes his writing as "intimate letters to a stranger," and I think that is what the writing process is. It begins with a question, and then you follow this path of exploration.

... I write out of my questions. Hopefully, if we write out of our humanity, our vulnerable nature, then some chord is struck with a reader and we touch on the page. I know that is why I read, to find those parts of myself in a story that I cannot turn away from. The writers who move me are the ones who create beauty and truth out of their sufferings, their yearnings, their discoveries. It is what I call the patience of words born out of the search.

... Perhaps as writers we are really storytellers, finding that golden thread that connects us to the past, present, and future at once. I love language and landscape. For me, writing is the correspondence between these two passions. It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presen ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Be attentive to the voice of grace. ~ Elizabeth Ann Seton

Where are they written?"
"In the world around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life, and you will discover where, every moment of the day, He hides His words and His will. Seek to do as He asks: this alone is the reason you are in the world."
"If I discover it, I'll write it on clay tablets."
"Do so. But write them, above all, in your heart; there they can neither burned nor destroyed, and you will take them wherever you go. ~ Paulo Coelho

Be attentive, paying close attention to your internal and external needs. ~ Asa Don Brown

It's that mind-heart connection that I believe compels us to not just be attentive to all the bright and dazzling things but also the dark and difficult things. ~ Bryan Stevenson

The words of the Lord are written in the word around us. Merely be attentive to what happens in your life and you will discover where. ~ Paulo Coelho

Everyone is always in need of something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy. There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

A mentality is a terrible thing to corrupt. Be attentive of what your mind consumes. ~ Troy Gathers

Be attentive.
Be adaptive.
Be accommodative.
Be assertive. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

For better or worse, I tend to do a lot of thinking in my poems. But lately I've been trying to pay more attention to when and where I do that thinking, to be attentive to the settings in which meditation takes place. Sometimes the disconnect between the mind and the world is itself revealing, but in 'The Whole World Is Gone,' I think the setting deeply complements, indeed elicits and allows, a certain set of realizations to occur. ~ Jennifer Grotz

To see the yellow fritillaries burst forth after the deep snows of winter and know that the bears are soon to follow is to be attentive to wild nature's seasonal fugue of infinite composition and succession. The great gray owl sitting on a snag near Sawmill Ponds is not simply a bird but a heightened intelligence with golden eyes behind a mask of feathers. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Keep your soul at peace, in order to be able to be attentive and very faithful to the inner movement of the Holy Spirit. ~ Peter Julian Eymard

We must forget ourselves and all self-interest, and listen, and be attentive to God. ~ Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

Total surrender to the demands of the human spirit: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love. ~ Bernard Lonergan

It must be the duty of racial hygiene to be attentive to a more severe elimination of morally inferior human beings than is the case today ... We should literally replace all factors responsible for selection in a natural and free life ... In prehistoric times of humanity, selection for endurance, heroism, social usefulness, etc. was made solely by hostile outside factors. This role must be assumed by a human organization; otherwise, humanity will, for lack of selective factors, be annihilated by the degenerative phenomena that accompany domestication. ~ Konrad Lorenz

Artifacts are alive. Each has a voice. They remind us what it means to be human - that it is our nature to survive, to create works of beauty to be resourceful, to be attentive to the world we live in. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

We must be very faithful, but without anxiety or eagerness; we must use the means that are given to us according to our vocation, and then remain in peace concerning all the rest. For God ... will always be attentive to provide us with whatever is necessary. ~ Francis De Sales

To be interested is to be absorbed in, wrapped up in, carried away by, some object. To take an interest is to be on the alert, to care about, to be attentive. ~ John Dewey

You can do it at any time. You can do it when you are sitting in a bus – that is, watch, observe. Be attentive to what is happening around you and what is happening in yourself – aware of the whole movement. You see, meditation is really a form of emptying the mind of everything known. Without this, you cannot know the unknown. To see anything new, totally new, the mind must be empty of all the past.

Truth, or God, or whatever name you like to give to it must be new, not something which is the result of propaganda, the result of conditioning. The Christian is conditioned by 2,000 years of propaganda, the Hindu, the Buddhist likewise conditioned. So for them God or Truth is the result of propaganda. But that is not Truth. Truth is something living every day. Therefore the mind must be emptied to look at Truth. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is difficult to ever see yourself. I don't know how I've developed or grown as a writer. I hope I am continuing to take risks on the page. I hope I am continuing to ask the hard questions of myself. If we are attentive to the world and to those around us, I believe we will be attentive on the page. Writing is about presence. I want to be fully present wherever I am, alive to the pulse just beneath the skin. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything else ... What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Keeping The City

"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.

Once,
in August,
head on your chest,
I heard wings
battering up the place,
something inside trying to fly out
and I was silent
and attentive,
the watchman.
I was your small public,
your small audience
but it was you that was clapping,
it was you untying the snarls and knots,
the webs, all bloody and gluey;
you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings
beating, wresting, beating, beating
your way out of childhood,
that airless net that fastened you down.

Since then I was more silent
though you had gone miles away,
tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.
I was there
but could do nothing
but guard the city
lest it break.

I was silent.
I had a strange idea I could overhear
but that your voice, tongue, wing
belonged solely to you.
The Lord was silent too.
I did not know if he could keep you whole,
where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,
could do nothing. Not a single thing.

The wings of the watchman,
if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul
as he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.
I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
w ~ Anne Sexton

Perhaps I can follow a heroic existential nihilist's sterling example of surviving the harshness of reality by employing an attentive narrative examination of my recalcitrant life to extract shards of personal truth and elicit a synthesizing purposefulness of my being from the darkness, anarchy, and chaos of existence. Perhaps through the act of engaging in a deliberative examination of the ontological mystery of being and investigating the accompanying stark brutal doubt that renders a materialistic life intolerably senseless, absurd, and meaningless, I can confront the baffle of being and establish a guiding set of personal values to live by in an indifferent world. Perhaps by using the contemplative tools of narrative storytelling, I can strictly scrutinize the key leaning rubrics veiled within an array of confusing personal life experiences. Perhaps by engaging in a creative act of discovery I can blunt the pain and anguish that comes from the nightmarish experience of suffering from an existential crisis. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

To regret fully is to appreciate how high the stakes are in even the average human life; fully experienced, it turns our eyes, attentive and alert, to a future possibly lived better than our past. ~ David Whyte

Today's headlines and history's judgment are rarely the same. If you are too attentive to the former you will most certainly not do the hard work of securing the latter ~ Condoleezza Rice

The only thing going on is the progression of words and sentences across page after page and so suddenly we see this immersive kind of very attentive thinking, whether you are paying attention to a story or to an argument, or whatever. And what we know about the brain is the brain adapts to these types of tools. ~ Nicholas G. Carr

When I turned to climb the third wave, I saw at my feet a small leaf, perhaps an inch long, pointed, withered to bright chestnut but still smooth. It was supported above the soil in the grey points of short grasses which did not bend beneath its weightlessness. It was curved in all three planes. Fibrous veins displayed its structure. It was quite still. And as I watched its stillness spread; first to me. I wanted not to move by a hair's breadth. Lest the bond between it and me should break. The stillness spread to the grass around us. It encompassed the hill. The beech wood became attendant on it. The whole valley slowly filled with it. The leaf, and I its participant, had drawn the mileswide landscape into an attentive, breathless synthesis ... there was no movement, no sound and no distinction or identifying of parts in all that had been there united. For there was no 'I' that gazed ... through that tiny gateway I became one with what was boundless. ~ Geoffrey Vickers

To master an actual technique, mental culture should come first.
Acquiring a technique requires a careful, modest, non-mean, free and attentive mind. In other words a player should do his utmost and nothing less. ~ Kyuzo Mifune

Really. It's plain for anyone to see that he cares for you. His eyes rarely leave you and he's terribly attentive. I'm positive he's in love with you, Terri. ~ Lynsay Sands

Votorantim is attentive to opportunities that arise in both domestic and international markets to expand its businesses. ~ Antonio Ermirio De Moraes

The key word is flexibility, the ability to adapt constantly. Darwin said it clearly. People thought that he mainly talked about survival of the fittest. What he said was that the species that survive are usually not the smartest or the strongest, but the ones most responsive to change. So being attentive to customers and potential partners is my best advice
after, of course, perseverance and patience. ~ Philippe Kahn

Leave the body in such a way that the Supreme Power gets notified and becomes aware, attentive and receptive to receive us, the way a child returns back home after decades of touring. ~ Vishal Chipkar

Mr Cobb was my escort. Such a nice escort, Mr Cobb. So attentive. You should see him sober. I should see him sober. Somebody should see him sober. I mean, just for the record. So it could become a part of history, that brief flashing moment, soon buried in time, but never forgotten - when Larry Cobb was sober. ~ Raymond Chandler

Mathilde made an effort to use the more intimate form; she was evidently more attentive to this unusual way of speaking than to what she was saying. This use of the singular form, stripped of the tone of affection, ceased, after a moment, to afford Julien any pleasure, he was astonished at the absence of happiness; finally, in order to feel it, he had recourse to his reason. He saw himself highly esteemed by this girl who was so proud, and never bestowed unrestricted praise; by this line of reasoning he arrived at a gratification of his self-esteem. ~ Stendhal

When an oath is taken ... the mind is more attentive; for it guards against two things, the reproach of friends and offence against the gods. ~ Sophocles

I am beginning to experience that an unconditional, total love of God makes a very articulate, alert, and attentive love for the neighbor possible. ~ Henri J.M. Nouwen

. A gentle tug on the leash and I would adjust myself quickly. I never questioned it. I knew that she knew where we were going and I never once looked back. Sometimes God does that too. He reminds us not to get too headstrong so that we remain humble and attentive to Him. He knows where He is taking us. ~ Kate McGahan

There are many benefits to this process of listening. The first is that good listeners are created as people feel listened to. Listening is a reciprocal process - we become more attentive to others if they have attended to us. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

Somewhere in the heart of experience there is an order and a coherence which we might purprise if we were attentive enough, loving enough, or patient enough. ~ Lawrence Durrell

Dinners at Stony Cross Park were famously lavish, and this one was no exception. Eight courses of fish, game, poultry, and beef were served, accompanied by fresh flower arrangements that were brought to the table with each new remove. They began with turtle soup, broiled salmon with capers, perch and mullet in cream, and succulent Jon Dory fish dressed with a delicate shrimp sauce. The next course consisted of peppered venison, herb-garnished ham, gently fried sweetbreads floating in steaming gravy, and crisp-skinned roast fowl. And so on and so forth, until the guests were stuffed and lethargic, their faces flushed from the constant replenishing of their wineglasses by attentive footmen. The dinner was concluded with a succession of platters filled with almond cheesecakes, lemon puddings, and rice souffles. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Faced with an ecological crisis whose roots lie in this disengagement, in the separation of human agency and social responsibility from the sphere of our direct involvement with the non-human environment, it surely behoves us to reverse this order of priority. I began with the point that while both humans and animals have histories of their mutual relations, only humans narrate such histories. But to construct a narrative, one must already dwell in the world and, in the dwelling, enter into relationships with its constituents, both human and non-human. I am suggesting that we rewrite the history of human-animal relations, taking this condition of active engagement, of being-in-the-world, as our starting point. We might speak of it as a history of human concern with animals, insofar as this notion conveys a caring, attentive regard, a 'being with'. And I am suggesting that those of us who are 'with' animals in their day-to-day lives, most notably hunters and herdsmen, can offer us some of the best possible indications of how we might proceed. ~ Tim Ingold

I used to believe that love and happiness were synonymous. I was a fool. Love intensifies all emotions. Nothing is so painful o so sweet, so thrilling or so desperate ... Pleasure is, after all, a luxury. It's love thats essential. You are never so alive as when you love, never so alert, intuitive, attentive, never so smart or so compassionate. ~ John Dufresne

I'm very attentive, Marley. I want to give it all of the resources at my disposal so it will thrive and flourish. I want to watch while it grows under my nurturing hands. ~ M.K. Schiller

You gotta love an attentive vampire

--Kylie ~ C.C. Hunter

I would like to coin the phrase alimentary theology, a theology that is more attentive to and welcoming of the multiple layers contained and implied in the making of theology. This is a theology that not only pays closer attention to matters related to food and nourishment, and the many ways they can relate, inspire, and inform theological reflection. Most importantly, it is an envisioning of theology as nourishment: food as theology and theology as food. Alimentary theology is envisioned as food for thought; it addresses some of the spiritual and physical hungers of the world, and seeks ways of bringing about nourishment. ~ Angel F. Mendez Montoya

In most cases we perform better when we're busy than when we're not busy. When we're slow, our mind wanders. We're not as attentive to our business. When we're on the firing line, we're sharper. We move more quickly and get the job done right. ~ S. Truett Cathy

In this way, little by little , moment by moment, life can slip by without us being fully here for it. Always preoccupied with getting somewhere else, we are hardly ever where we actually are and attentive to what is actually unfolding in this moment. ~ J. Mark G. Williams

Reading books makes us more attentive to our personage and the aesthetic world that we live in. Writers that we idolize use language, logic, and nuance to paint physical and emotional scenes with refined precision. A writer's use of vivid language creates lingering aftereffects that work their wonder on the reader's malleable mind. A stirred mind resurrects our semiconscious memories; it causes us to summon up enduring images of our family, friends, and acquaintances. Just as importantly, inspirational writing makes us recognize our own telling character traits and identify our formerly unexpressed thoughts and feelings. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

They had a fabulous sex life. Drake was an attentive, tender lover who took his time in pleasing her. But every once in a while something in him changed and she caught a glimpse of the truly dangerous man he really was. She hadn't tamed him, not one bit. He just chose to show her a tender side he said he'd only discovered with her.
But sometimes the tiger in him growled and clawed its way to the surface. And then the sex was incandescent. ~ Lisa Marie Rice

Are you attentive when your inner self-speaks to you? ~ Patricia Dsouza

She had once been a Catholic, but discovering that priests were infinitely more attentive when she was in process of losing or regaining faith in Mother Church, she maintained an enchantingly wavering attitude. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

When you study by listening directly to the teacher, it is like turning an attentive ear to our body, and that is Dahnhak. All scriptures are a kind of teachings, and the means to get to the Truth, but they are not the Truth itself. The awakened can feel the Truth. When this is translated into words and letters, they get to lose the heart and soul of the Truth.
from The Way to Light Up Your Divinity ~ Ilchi Lee

It's one that still happens, actually ... forgetting a part of a difficult piece. Usually, the chances of it happening are directly proportional to how quiet and attentive the audience is. ~ Steve Morse

Thomas was the most loving, wonderful, and attentive husband that I could ever imagine on some days, and on others it was as if I married Lucifer himself. ~ Sara Niles

All right, so call me Miss Cliche of 1960, but the thing about the married ones that always spooks me is how sweet and attentive they are at first, when they're on the prowl. ~ S.J Perelman

Each soul must awaken from the aloneness of a private dream world to greet the morning sun, view the sweet earth, apprehend the great silence, and demonstrate an appreciative thanks to everyday of life by living in a rapt state of attentive awareness. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation. ~ Oliver Goldsmith