Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.
—Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go, There You Are
If you pay attention to the world, it’s an amazing place. If you don’t, it’s whatever you think it is.
—Reggie Watts
Anything looked at closely becomes wonderful.
—A.R. Ammons
Even if our efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result, one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood the soul.
—Simone Weil
Cinema, radio, television, and magazines are a school of inattention: people look without seeing, listen without hearing.
—Robert Bresson
Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
—Walker Evans
It is easy to sit up and take notice, What is difficult is getting up and taking action.
—Honoré de Balzac
You can observe a lot just by watching.
—Yogi Berra
The heart is forever inexperienced.
—Henry David Thoreau
In a sense, we are all crashing to our death from the top story of our birth to the flat stones of the churchyard and wondering with an immortal Alice in Wonderland at the patterns of the passing wall.
—Vladimir Nabokov
If you study Japanese art, you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic, and intelligent who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspect of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole.
—Vincent Van Gogh
There is no such thing as a weird human being, It’s just that some people require more understanding than others.
—Tom Robbins
Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever.
—Albert Einstein
I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.
—Herb Caen
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower