Distraction Quotes

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.

~ Raymond Carver

Is everybody in? Is everybody in? Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin. The entertainment for this evening is not new, you've seen this entertainment through and through you have seen your birth, your life, your death....you may recall all the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? -enough to base a movie on??

~ Jim Morrison

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.

~ C.s. Lewis

We're very familiar with the idea that some things are so complex they're beyond our comprehension. This not only keeps us solving and experimenting but also distracted. Many things are really so simple we can't see them under our big noses.

~ Criss Jami

As with our colleges, so with a hundred ‘modern improvements;’ there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at...

~ Henry David Thoreau

The saints, too, had wandering minds. The saints, too, had constantly to recall their constantly wandering mind-child home. They became saints because they continued to go after the little wanderer, like the Good Shepherd.

~ Peter Kreeft

Another distraction that deviates people from their God given purpose and calling is the distraction of job and formal education.

~ Sunday Adelaja

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

INTEREST. Here is the key to the whole thing. If and when you are truly interested in what you are doing, or are about to do, then you will center your attention on it with little or no effort, and almost irrespective of the attendant conditions.

~ Ralph Alfred Habas

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

~ Julio Cortázar

I can't blame modern technology for my predilection for distraction, not after all the hours I've spent watching lost balloons disappear into the clouds. I did it before the Internet, and I'll do it after the apocalypse, assuming we still have helium and weak-gripped children.

~ Colson Whitehead

We are here to love. Everything else is distraction.

~ Scott Stabile

It's alright to keep and open mind, but at a certain point—once you have thoroughly completed your homework—you have to learn how to stop and focus on intensely and passionately executing these goals step by step. You have to repel the distractions.

~ Injap Sia

It is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired.

~ George Eliot

Goals for the future distract from worry and anger about the past and redirect your focus to the direction you're travelling in.

~ Sam Owen

On your way to accomplish greatness, you will hear a lot of noise. Listen to your inner voice and never let the distraction of the crowd discolour your poise.

~ Israelmore Ayivor

Solitude is the measure through which you could concentrate on using your time. It is through solitude that you can convert your time into something of value. Solitude is a way of overcoming distraction so that you can convert your time into something of worth.

~ Sunday Adelaja

Solitude is a way of overcoming distraction so that you can convert your time into something of worth.

~ Sunday Adelaja

That is a vacation! It is the best time for you to be productive because you are not being distracted by work.

~ Sunday Adelaja

I needed something--the distraction of another life--to alleviate fear.

~ Bret Easton Ellis

Your calling is important, regardless of its status or other people’s opinion

~ Sunday Adelaja

Distraction is a killer of dreams, visions and goals

~ Topsy Gift

Humility is by far the most spiritual virtue of the lot. The only way by which one may cease obsessing over himself is to wholly step outside his flesh. But who could do this by himself? And who would really want to under his natural pretense? And even if somehow he could and he succeeded, would not it be artificial? Would not he seem far too aware of his own talents of achieving humility for it to be such? Alternatively, he would need a distraction, something else to love; it is not that the Humbleman thinks poorly of himself, nor highly for that matter, but rather he does not think of himself at all - and this is because he is too busy loving something or someone else to do it. For the humility of this kind 'rears its head' as the most love-driven and free, spiritual of virtues; whereas its opposite, pride, the most self-imprisoning human vice.

~ Criss Jami

Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history. Georges Pompidou

~ Mark Kurlansky

Delay is as dangerous as the wrong answer.

~ Frank Herbert

The British Army has a fine tradition of being so distracted by what it is currently up to it stubbornly refuses to look round the corner, let alone into the future.

~ Patrick Hennessey

Once art served to educate and edify, now it distracts and amuses.

~ James Rozoff

People will seek the ends of the galaxy to avoid that which they need most.

~ Criss Jami

People who are distracted by door money, neglect the production and the audience. Money becomes their god. They sacrifice their reputation in favor of building revenue. Believe me; the former is more difficult to recover if lost.

~ Carlos Wallace

Everyone’s mind has sort of a slum division—a flirtatious spot that doesn’t give a hoot about how grave a situation is but constantly endeavors to derail more earnest thoughts, almost like a death-wish backseat driver.

~ Pawan Mishra

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain rather than left, or left rather than right. In my mind there were many rooms and, just as I still got lost in the labyrinth of corridors at college, I often found myself lost, with a sense of déjà vu, in some obscure part of my cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that plays a key role in perceptual awareness, attention and memory. Everything I had lived through or imagined or dreamed appeared to have been backed up on a video clip and then scattered among those alien rooms. I could stumble into any number of scenes, from the horrifically sexual, horror-movie sequences that were crude and painful, to visualizing Grandpa polishing his shoes.

~ Alice Jamieson

Ellington Feint was a line in my mind running right down the middle of my life, separating the formal training of my childhood and the territory of the rest of my days. She was an axis, and at that moment and for many moments afterward, my entire world revolved around her.

~ Lemony Snicket

Love is one of the most motivating and self-defining forces in our lives, whether we turn from it or allow ourselves to be drawn to it. If you allow romantic possibilities with others to consume all your time and energy, they will distract you from the things of interest that fill your life with passion and purpose.

~ A.j. Darkholme

There are two types of 'busy': 1)Constantly distracting yourself from what is true. 2) Constantly working to create something real.

~ Oli Anderson

If everyone could spend some time self analysing, spend some quiet time with nothing to do and nowhere to go, then without a doubt the world would be an infinitely better place to live and play. It would probably be the cause of the end of bullying, teen suicide, anxiety, depression, stress, and fear and the start of a more genuine and authentic world. I have found that my tranquillity and peacefulness grew significantly stronger as I began to live comfortably with my desires and cravings.

~ Evan Sutter

My insanity begged for a distraction. (Eric)

~ Shannon A. Thompson

We consume so we never have to answer the hard questions. When we are bored we eat. When we are lonely we watch a movie, read the newspaper, jump on social media. Each time we do we cover up our real emotions and keep throwing another layer of confusion and anxiety on top, making it almost impossible to dig ourselves out of the hole, or at least see which way is up.

~ Evan Sutter

We do not know how to just do nothing; this is a bigger problem than we care to think about. In the west we are taught to seek our answers in external things and, as a result, we never need to take the time to look within. We have a poor connection with ourselves because our whole lives we have been looking outward; we are a society bent on distraction, and the modern world is only amplifying this.

~ Evan Sutter

If you get stuck, get away from your desk. Take a walk, take a bath, go to sleep, make a pie, draw, listen to ­music, meditate, exercise; whatever you do, don't just stick there scowling at the problem. But don't make telephone calls or go to a party; if you do, other people's words will pour in where your lost words should be. Open a gap for them, create a space. Be pat

~ Hilary Mantel

Computers are quiet and clean and totally distracting because the Internet is there, lying in wait for a moment of weakness to pounce on your creativity and progress.

~ Arlaina Tibensky