Distraction Quotes

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our skills are tested and refined. A medical professor describes the easy familiarity with which her digital-native resident students master medical electronic records—but is troubled by the fact that they enter data with their eyes focused on their digital devices, not on the patient in the room with them. Preoccupation with technology acts as a screen between the student and the patient’s real emotion, real fear, and real concern. It may also prevent these residents from noticing physical symptoms that the patient fails to mention. The easy busyness of medical record entry is a way to sidestep the more challenging dynamics of human connection. But experienced physicians know that interpersonal skills are essential to mastering the art and science of medical diagnosis.

Some people might enjoy drain water if they were told it was vodka.

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.

Television news is akin to audible wallpaper.

Serious people are not easily distracted!

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

My insanity begged for a distraction. (Eric)

Your main target should be to find and develop your own unique individuality and not let your focus be sidetracked and drift to external things

Even a good family can become a trap for one’s destiny when the family becomes your aim

If it was bliss to be alive, to hunt was rapture.

What good is there in being blind, you ask? Well, maybe it's to see the beauty on the inside without being vainly distracted, or superficially blinded, by the ugly on the outside.

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.

I am trying not to philosophize. It is un-military. I think I can dig myself out of my academic mind and make an efficient officer.

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

Adoration drives obedience, but throughout history people are prone to forget the faithfulness of God yesterday.

Distraction is a killer of dreams, visions and goals

In such an admirable position of the New World, man has no other enemy than himself.

He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention.

Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news?

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

Fatigues and hardships serve to wean me more from the earth, and will make heaven sweeter.

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...

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.

Security is by far the city's predominant business.

Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs.

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.

Idling of our elders is called business; the idling of boys, though quite like it, is punished by those same elders, and no one pities either the boys or the men.

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

weren’t you alwaysdistracted by expectation, as if every eventannounced a beloved? (Where can you find a placeto keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside yougoing and coming and often staying all night.)…

The narrator refers to a character as "an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.

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.

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.

This is what technology wants, it wants to be a symptom. Like all psychological symptoms, it obscures a problem by "solving" it without addressing it.

...shiny trinkets and frivolous spending make people forget what world they're living in.

Sometimes the imagination could be even crueler than the bone saw.

The phrase "having it all" has little to do with having what we want.

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

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

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.

Are you placed where others are sitting down idly, doing nothing? Rise to the work with all your powers; and when the sweat stands upon your brow, and you are tempted to loiter, cry, "No, I cannot stop, for I am Christ's. If I were not purchased by blood, I might be like Issachar, crouching between two burdens; but I am Christ's, and cannot loiter.

I need a drink. Now.”After tossing—fine, throwing—my purse and keys on the couch, I march straight into the kitchen. No more delays; it's time to forget tonight. It’s been yet another night like all the other first dates that never meet a second one. When you begin to lose count, that's when it's really time for a drink.Adrian stands there, leaning against the counter in an unbuttoned dress shirt and dark wash jeans. He glances at me as I walk in. “How was your date?” he asks, taking a swig of his scotch.I brush past him on my mission, opening the cupboard and moving a couple bottles around. I reiterate, “I need alcohol.”Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him hiding a smile before he says, “That bad?”My face twitches as I ignore his line of questioning. It is more like a statement he wants me to clarify, even though he already knows the answer. Instead, I ask, “I have vodka left, don't I?” I stand on my tiptoes in hopes of spotting something in the very back. Nothing.He waltzes over and looks with me, his chin almost touching my shoulder. “I think you polished that one off after last week's date.” His voice is low right next to my ear, very nearly causing a shiver.

Ignorance is one of the best defense available. Distraction is a remedy.

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??

Eighteen pockets in one suit? I haven't the time.

... answered his knock with a smile, a short one forced through because she was at heart a warm person, not given to the dark mood swings which now plagued her.

Tale-bearing emits a threefold poison; for it injures the teller, the hearer, and the person concerning whom the tale is told.

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

The worlds high on doing and distracting and as result we need to keep doing and it doesn’t really matter what we are doing, as long as it is distracting.

We need to focus on our gift and never allow ourselves to be distracted from the execution of our purpose

Even those who know better, such as the King, nurse strange ideas about me as a prophet. They do not understand that I am given to see only those matters that roil the heavens. They expect me to know everything.

Children content with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere.

we sulked and, in the finest tradition of bored soldiers, sat around throwing stones at each other.

Distraction is reading written word and when I seek to make distraction I write the words I wish to be enveloped in.

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.

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.

Well, hell yeah! I’m gonna kick your ass, too!”I narrowed my eyes at him. “Not this time you’re not. I have a new superpower.”He laughed. “And what’s that? Harsh language?”I leaned over to kiss his neck once, and then ran my tongue up to his ear, kissing his earlobe. He froze in place. “Distraction,” I breathed into his ear. He grabbed my arms and flipped me onto my back. “You’re going to miss another class.

Creating chaos provides excitement for some people, especially those who are uneasy with silence, those who distract themselves from their own problems by focusing outward, those who feel empty inside and need to fill themselves up with activity, and those who were raised in an environment in which harmony and peace were unknown.

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.

After giving it some thought, I've decided to name my monkey mind Ricky Bobby. I was thinking about Latin names like Javier, but I don't want to make my jumping, distractable self sound mysterious and sexy. Ricky Bobby makes me laugh. A name like that seems silly, not strong. Just a goofy little thing that doesn't know what to do with its hands, likes to go fast, and loves tiny, infant, baby Jesus.

The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires, serial killers, codes hidden in paintings, and so on. I mean so-called serious literature. A boy goes hunting with his emotionally volatile father, a bereaved woman befriends an asylum seeker, a composer with a rare neurological disorder walks around New York, thinking about the nature of art. People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that's the big thing. The way these books have it, you trip over a rock you'll find some hidden meaning waiting there. Everyone's constantly on the verge of some soul-shaking transformation. And it's - if you'll forgive my language - it's bullshit. Modern people live in a state of distraction. They go from one distraction to the next, and that's how they like it. They don't transform, they don't stop to smell the roses, they don't sit around recollecting long passages of their childhood - Jesus, I can hardly remember what I was doing two days ago. My point is, people aren't waiting to be restored to some ineffable moment. They're not looking for meaning. That whole idea of the novel - that's finished.