Concentrates Quotes & Sayings

Bouillabaisse, this golden soup, this incomparable golden soup which embodies and concentrates all the aromas of our shores and which permeates, like an ecstasy, the stomachs of astonished gastronomes. Bouillabaisse is one of those classic dishes whose glory has encircled the world, and the miracle consists of this: there are as many bouillabaisses as there are good chefs or cordon bleus. Each brings to his own version his special touch. — Curnonsky

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. — Steven Pressfield

It irritates me that everybody concentrates on Gawker, because it's just one of 15 sites and it doesn't even get the most traffic. It's a significant site, but it's not what we are. — Nick Denton

Body concentrates order. It continuously self-repairs. Every five days you get a new stomach lining. You get a new liver every two months. Your skin replaces itself every six weeks. Every year, 98 percent of the atoms of your body are replaced. This non-stop chemical replacement, metabolism, is a sure sign of life. — Lynn Margulis

The secret of success lies in that old word, 'Drudgery,' in doing one thing long after it ceases to be amusing; and it is 'this one thing I do' that gathers me together from my chaos, that concentrates me from possibilities to powers, and turns powers into achievements. — Orison Swett Marden

Certain kinds of speed, flow, intensity, density of attacks, density of interaction ... Music that concentrates on those qualities is, I think, easier achieved by free improvisation between people sharing a common attitude, a common language. — Evan Parker

She leans into the memory. She stares. She concentrates. What IS it that's she's looking for, trying to get straight at last? — Vivian Gornick

The world economy diffuses rather than concentrates wealth. — Robert Gilpin

There are people who claim to love humanity, while others object that we can love only in the singular, that is, only individuals. I agree and add that what goes for love also goes for hate. Man, this being pining for equilibrium, balances the weight of the evil piled on his back with the weight of his hatred. But try directing your hatred at mere abstract principles, at injustice, fanaticism, cruelty, or, if you've managed to find the human principle itself hateful, then try hating mankind! Such hatreds are beyond human capacity, and so man, if he wishes to relieve his anger (aware as he is of its limited power) concentrates it on a single individual. — Milan Kundera

Now the work of art also represents a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy, and there are those who resent it. But art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all. — Rudolf Arnheim

New York is an egotist. It will suffer no divided attention. "Look at me!" says the voice of the city imperiously, and its children obey. It snatches their thoughts from their inner griefs, and concentrates them on the pageant that rolls unceasingly from one end of the island to the other. One may despair in New York, but it is difficult to brood on the past; for New York is the City of the Present, the City of Things that are Going On. — P.G. Wodehouse

Gloire de Dijon
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.
She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses. — D.H. Lawrence

Failure concentrates the mind wonderfully. If you don't make mistakes, you're not trying hard enough. — Jasper Fforde

My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it ... I think your hand concentrates for you. I don't know why it should be so. — Rebecca West

Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better - because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity. — Dieter Rams

A virtuous man concentrates on his own work, not that of others. — Zengzi

Usually, when a young girl is pregnant, she drops out of school and concentrates on being a mother. I thought that's what I had to do, but my counselors told me there was no way they would let me drop out. I had too much promise. — Jenni Rivera

The traveler who crosses a mountain in the direction of a star runs the risk of forgetting which is his guiding star if he concentrates too exclusively on the climbing problems. If he only acts for action's sake, he will get nowhere. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The will's operation is quite distinct from the will's feeling: By its operation, which is love, the will is united with God and terminates in him, and not by the feeling and gratification of its appetite that remains in the soul and goes no further. The feelings only serve as stimulants to love, if the will desires to pass beyond them; and they serve for no more. Thus the delightful feelings do not of themselves lead the soul to God, but rather cause it to become attached to delightful feelings. But the operation of the will, which is the love of God, concentrates the affection, joy, plea sure, satisfaction, and love of the soul only on God, leaving aside all things and loving him above them all. — San Juan De La Cruz

When anything important has to be written ... I think your hand concentrates for you. — Rebecca West

Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. — Samuel Johnson

Television concentrates its blue flicker of death in the frontal lobe — Allen Ginsberg

The mind will always take on an order conforming to that upon which it concentrates. — Richard J. Foster

From this story it may be seen what the nature of true storytelling is. The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time. — Walter Benjamin

The more one concentrates on breathing, the more the external stimuli fade into the background ... In due course one even grows immune to larger stimuli, and at the same time detachment from them becomes easier and quicker. Care has only to be taken that the body is relaxed whether standing, sitting or lying, and if one then concentrates on breathing one soon feels oneself shut in by impermeable layers of silence. One only knows and feels that one breathes. And, to detach oneself from this feeling and knowing, no fresh decision is required, for the breathing slows down of its own accord, becomes more and more economical in the use of breath, and finally, slipping by degrees into a blurred monotone, escapes one's attention altogether. — Eugen Herrigel

The hidden master of the Filipino-style Chinese donut is Benito Taganes, proprietor and king of the bubbling vats at Mabuhay. Mabuhay, dark, cramped, invisible from the street, stays open all night long. It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers and shlemiels, whores and night owls. With the fat applauding in the fryers, the exhaust fans roaring, and the boom box blasting the heartsick kundimans of Benito's Manila childhood, the clientele makes free with their secrets. A golden mist of kosher oil hangs in the air and baffles the senses. Who could overhear with ears full of KosherFry and the wailing of Diomedes Maturan? — Michael Chabon

To pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than oneself. Whenever a man so concentrates his attention - on a landscape, a poem, a geometrical problem, an idol, or the True God - that he completely forgets his own ego and desires, he is praying. The primary task of the schoolteacher is to teach children, in a secular context, the technique of prayer. — W. H. Auden

Pain concentrates the mind. Pain tethers you to this world, and the rope is a stout one. But at the same time, the grace of God enables you to look along the pain, to look down the entire length of the trial, and to see the purpose and point of it all. — Douglas Wilson

Dialogue concentrates meaning; conversation dilutes it. — Robert McKee

In the end it is nothing other than the loving kindness with which the woman cares for her child that makes the difference. Her concern concentrates on one thing just like the Buddhist practice of concentration. She thinks of nothing but her child, which is similar to Buddhist compassion. That must be why, although she created no other causes to bring about it, she was reborn in the Brahma heaven. — Gautama Buddha

To dream magnificently is not a gift given to all men, and even for those who possess it, it runs a strong risk of being progressively diminished by the ever-growing dissipation of modern life and by the restlessness engendered by material progress. The ability to dream is a divine and mysterious ability; because it is through dreams that man communicates with the shadowy world which surrounds him. But this power needs solitude to develop freely; the more one concentrates, the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply. — Charles Baudelaire

Non-instrumental, playful behavior thrives on a continuing negotiation with the various forms of discipline, exploitation and spectacle which constitute the contemporary city. Play concentrates attention on practices which have a dialectical relation to the order, fixity and functional and semiotic determinism of built form. — Quentin Stevens

To walk is to lack a place. It is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper. The moving about that the city mutliplies and concentrates makes the city itself an immense social experience of lacking a place
an experience that is, to be sure, broken up into countless tiny deportations (displacements and walks), compensated for by the relationships and intersections of these exoduses that intertwine and create an urban fabric, and placed under the sign of what ought to be, ultimately, the place but is only a name, the City ... a universe of rented spaces haunted by a nowhere or by dreamed-of places. — Michel De Certeau

It is those who concentrates on but one thing at a time who advance in this world. The great man or woman is the one who never steps outside his or her specialty or foolishly dissipates his or her individuality. — Og Mandino

It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers,and schlemiels, whores and night owls ... three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calulations of their next big mistake. — Michael Chabon

Most modern literary criticism is literary and nothing else - that is, it concentrates on an author's style and thinks it rather vulgar to notice his subject matter. — George Orwell

In her excellent, entirely readable Richard Wright, Hazel Rowley accomplishes what [previous biographer] Michel Fabre would have liked to do with once-guarded letters, aging witnesses, previously unidentified girlfriends ... Mostly, Rowley concentrates on telling Wright's very powerful story. — Darryl Pinckney

There is a fallacy that the powerful emotion of youth mellows with time. Not true. One learns to control and suppress it. But it doesn't lessen. It simply hides and concentrates itself in more discreet places. When one accidentally stumbles into one of these abysses, the pain is spectacular. — Nicole Krauss

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us . — Steven Pressfield

It may well be that the chemist or physiologist is right when he decides that he will become a better chemist or physiologist if he concentrates on his subject at the expense of his general education. But in the study of society exclusive concentration on a speciality has a peculiarly baneful effect: it will not merely prevent us from being attractive company or good citizens but may impair our competence in our proper field - or at least for some of the most important tasks we have to perform. The physicist who is only a physicist can still be a first class physicist and a most valuable member of society. But nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist - and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger. — Friedrich Hayek

So she concentrates on technique. The professional masters how, and leaves what and why to the gods. — Steven Pressfield

Democracy generally monopolizes and concentrates power. — Lord Acton

You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates, we can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort, we can pump oxygen in, and waste material out, but there's one thing we can't simulate. That's a very basic need. Man's hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness, that's one thing we haven't licked yet. — Rod Serling

I think what separates a superstar from the average ballplayer is that he concentrates just a little bit longer. — Hank Aaron

The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a 'case', obscuring the opponent's point of view and avoiding awkward questions. — George Orwell

The Warrior of the Light concentrates on the small miracles of daily life. He is capable of seeing what is beautiful because he carries beauty within himself, for the world is a mirror and gives back to each man the reflection of his own face. — Paulo Coelho

Crime brings together honest men and concentrates them. — Emile Durkheim

The colonial period has been the proving ground in America for the new social history, which concentrates on the ordinary doings of ordinary people rather than on high culture and high politics. Unfortunately ordinary people, almost by definition, leave behind only faint traces of their existence. — Edmund Morgan

The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. — Steven Pressfield

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged. — Terry Pratchett

It's not just Ethiopia, but Africa in general - most of the media concentrates on what's not going well. But there is so much beauty there. When you go, it changes everything. It changes you, your life, and the way you see things. The challenge is changing the image of Africa that's been anchored in people for years now. — Liya Kebede

The approach of death certainly concentrates the mind. — A. N. Wilson

If one concentrates on one thing and does not get away from it ... he will possess strong, moving power. — Cheng Yi

Brian Myers takes a fresh approach. He largely ignores what the regime tells the outside world about itself, but concentrates instead on what North Koreans themselves are supposed to believe, paying special attention to the North Korean narratives and mass culture, including movies and television shows. ( ... ) There are few books that can give the world a peek into the Hermit Kingdom. The Cleanest Race provides a reason to care about how those in North Korea see themselves and the West. It is possibly the best addition to that small library. — Andrei Lankov

Vitamin C is the world's best natural antibiotic, antiviral, antitoxin and antihistamine. This book's recurring emphasis on vitamin C might suggest that I am offering a song with only one verse. Not so. As English literature concentrates on Shakespeare, so orthomolecular (megavitamin) therapy concentrates on vitamin C. Let the greats be given their due. The importance of vitamin C cannot be overemphasised. — Andrew W. Saul

The "third eye" ... "our sacred Cyclops" ... our "good" eye, the only one that can see beyond our conditioned ways of seeing. It is, of course, a knowing eye, not a seeing one. It is the eye through which we look within to experience the universe unfolding. It is the single eye that concentrates duality into the One: the eye of insight, the locus of the point of remembrance on the ascent to death, as well as the point of forgetfulness on the descent into birth. — Stephen Levine

Bad habits can be ingrained in our neurons as easily as good ones. Pascual-Leone observes that "plastic changes may not necessarily represent a behavioral gain for a given subject." In addition to being "the mechanism for development and learning," plasticity can be "a cause of pathology."35 It comes as no surprise that neuroplasticity has been linked to mental afflictions ranging from depression to obsessive-compulsive disorder to tinnitus. The more a sufferer concentrates on his symptoms, the deeper those symptoms are etched into his neural circuits. In the worst cases, the mind essentially trains itself to be sick. — Nicholas Carr

The principal difference between love and hate is that love is an irradiation, and hate is a concentration. Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the object of its hatred. All the fearful counterfeits of love - possessiveness, lust, vanity, jealousy - are closer to hate: they concentrate on the object, guard it, suck it dry. — Sydney J. Harris

I care not what your education is, elaborate or nothing, what your mental calibre is, great or small, that man who concentrates all his energies of body, mind and soul in one direction is a tremendous man. — Thomas De Witt Talmage

Freezing concentrates sugar (maple sugar), alcohol, and salt solutions as efficiently as heating distils water or alcohol from solutions. Open pans of maple sugar can have the surface ice removed regularly (each day) until a sugar concentrate remains. Salts in water, and alcohol in ferment liquors can be concentrated in the same way. — Bill Mollison

Mind concentrates: it acts out of the past. Meditation acts in the present, out of the present. — Rajneesh

Tea. I find that both settles the stomach and concentrates the mind. Wonderful drink, tea. — Cassandra Clare

Magic intensifies and concentrates passions, strengthening not only joy, but ruinous passions as well, and in this way they may become obsessions, and unbearable unless released. -Joseph Anders — Terry Goodkind

He who sincerely seeks his real purpose in life is himself sought by that purpose. As he concentrates on that search a light begins to clear his confusion, call it revelation, call it inspiration, call it what you will. It is mistrust that misleads. Sincerity leads straight to the goal. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

I've also long since realized that the way to really engage children is to give out prizes; it's amazing how it concentrates their minds. — Alexander McCall Smith

All winning teams are goal-oriented. Teams like these win consistently because everyone connected with them concentrates on specific objectives. They go about their business with blinders on; nothing will distract them from achieving their aims. — Lou Holtz

If one sits down and concentrates on imagining the worst possible surroundings for rehearsing a musical show, it's never as bad as the rehearsal rooms one actually lands in. — Hildegard Knef

The banker, therefore, is not so much primarily a middleman in the commodity "purchasing power" as a producer of this commodity. However, since all reserve funds and savings today usually flow to him, and the total demand for free purchasing power, whether existing or to be created, concentrates on him, he has either replaced private capitalists or become their agent; he has himself become the capitalist par excellence. — Joseph A. Schumpeter

I don't have a partner, so I take care of the mortgage by myself, and I was thinking, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to sell the house or find a new career.' I was not in a good place, but it was a real spur to get 'The Girl on the Train' right. I had to nail it and do it really well. It really concentrates the mind, that kind of thing. — Paula Hawkins

A winner concentrates on that which is goal achieving rather than tension relieving. — Denis Waitley

One book at a time ... though I'm usually doing the research for others while I'm writing, but that sort of research is fairly desultory and I like to stick to the book being written - and writing a book concentrates the mind so the research is more productive. — Bernard Cornwell

The international media concentrates on the famous, the big names. Al Jazeera goes to the margins, investigates stories that are still developing and in the future become very big. Why did the Arabic world love Al Jazeera? Everybody felt he was represented in the newsroom and on the screen. That kind of belonging is ours. — Wadah Khanfar

Generally speaking, punishment makes men hard and cold; it concentrates; it sharpens the feeling of alienation; it strengthens the power of resistance — Friedrich Nietzsche

In the new American ghetto, the nightmare engine is bubble economics, a kind of high-tech casino scam that kills neighborhoods just like dope does, only the product is credit, not crack or heroin. It concentrates the money of the population in just a few hands with brutal efficiency, just like narco-business, and just as in narco-business the product itself, debt, steadily demoralizes the customer to the point where he's unable to prevent himself from being continually dominated. — Matt Taibbi

The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention. Love concentrates so intently on another that you forget yourself at that moment. Attention says, "I value you enough to give you my most precious asset - my time." Whenever you give your time, you are making a sacrifice, and sacrifice is the essence of love. Jesus modeled this: "Be full of love for others, following the example of Christ who loved you and gave Himself to God as a sacrifice to take away your sins" (Ephesians 5:2, LB). — Rick Warren

Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated. — George MacDonald

When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. — Steven Pressfield

Each work of art excludes the world, concentrates attention on itself. For the time it is the only thing worth doing -to do just that; be it a sonnet, a statue, a landscape, an outline head of Caesar, or an oration. Presently we return to the sight of another that globes itself into a whole as did the first, for example, a beautiful garden; and nothing seems worth doing in life but laying out a garden. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The question to ask about education is not 'What can I do with it?' That is the wrong question because it concentrates on instrumental values and reduces everything to a useful art. The right question is rather 'What can it do to me? — Arthur F. Holmes

Fear is a strong instrument of power, brother, extremely strong, in fact. If you pluck the right strings the population stays docile, concentrates on idiotic rubbish and doesn't complain about the things that are really important, like freedom of expression and thought and other fundamental human rights. — Anders De La Motte

I like to watch his hands as he works, making a blank page bloom with strokes of ink, adding touches of color to our previously black and yellowish book. His face takes on a special look when he concentrates. His usual easy expression is replaced by something more intense and removed that suggests an entire world locked away inside him. I've seen flashes of this before: in the arena, or when he speaks to a crowd, or that time he shoved the Peacekeepers' guns away from me in District 11. I don't know quite what to make of it. I also become a little fixated on his eyelashes, which ordinarily you don't notice much because they're so blond. But up close, in the sunlight slanting in from the window, they're a light golden color and so long I don't see how they keep from getting all tangled up when he blinks. — Suzanne Collins

Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space. — John McGahern

The child who concentrates is immensely happy. — Maria Montessori

My husband is so confident that when he watches sports on television, he thinks that if he concentrates he can help his team. If the team is in trouble, he coaches the players from our living room, and if they're really in trouble, I have to get off the phone in case they call him. — Rita Rudner

The tall building, concentrating man in one place more densely than ever before, similarly concentrates the dilemma of our public architecture at the end of the twentieth century: whether the new forms made possible by technology are doomed by the low calculations of modern patrons and their architects. — Martin Filler

My own foundation concentrates on women's economic empowerment on the basis that if women have their own money and are able to support themselves, they can make choices about what happens to them in their lives, about whether they have education, whether they get married, and what happens to their children. — Cherie Blair

Under normal conditions the research scientist is not an innovator but a solver of puzzles, and the puzzles upon which he concentrates are just those which he believes can be both stated and solved within the existing scientific tradition. — Thomas S. Kuhn

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens. — Franz Kafka

For me, the Immaculate Conception is the feast of 'passive action,' the action that functions simply by the transmission through us of divine energy. Purity, in spite of outward appearances, is essentially an active virtue, because it concentrates God in us and on those who are subject to our influence. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Sometimes it happens that a man's circle of horizon becomes smaller and smaller, and as the radius approaches zero it concentrates on one point. And then that becomes his point of view. — David Hilbert

For a few days after getting into the water the toad concentrates on building up his strength by eating small insects. Presently he has swollen to his normal size again, and then he goes through a phase of intense sexiness. — George Orwell

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point to set fire to the human spirit. — Thomas Merton

I have lots of desires - good body, nice skin, cute, beautiful, knows how to cook, concentrates on her work, a girl that's worth the respect. — Seungri

The more a sufferer concentrates on his symptoms, the deeper those symptoms are etched into his neural circuits. In the worst cases, the mind essentially trains itself to be sick. Many addictions, too, are reinforced by the strengthening of plastic pathways to the brain. Even very small doses of addictive drugs can dramatically alter the flow of neurotransmitters in a person's synapses, resulting in long-lasting alterations in brain circuitry and function. In some cases, the buildup of certain kinds of neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, a pleasure-producing cousin to adrenaline, seems to actually trigger the turning on or off particular genes, bringing even stronger cravings for the drug. The vital path turns deadly. — Nicholas Carr

A focused Board concentrates on strategy oversight and governance practices, to avoid getting lost in the forest. — Pearl Zhu

Aioli intoxicates gently, fills the body with warmth, and the soul with
enthusiasm. In its essence it concentrates the strength, the gaiety of
Provence: sunshine. — Frederic Mistral

This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete. — Steven Pressfield

In phrases as brief as a breath worldly wisdom concentrates. — Willis Regier

Nothing, save the hangman's noose, concentrates the mind like piles of cash. — Tim Wu

What a wonderful phenomenon it is, carefully considered, when the human eye, that jewel of organic structures, concentrates its moist brilliance on another human creature! — Thomas Mann