Distracted Life Quotes & Sayings

The relative ease of most driving lures us into thinking we can get away with doing other things. Indeed, those other things, like listening to the radio, can help when driving itself is threatening to cause fatigue. But we buy into the myth of multitasking with little actual knowledge of how much we can really add in or, as with the television news, how much we are missing. As the inner life of the driver begins to come into focus, it is becoming clear not only that distraction is the single biggest problem on the road but that we have little concept of just how distracted we are. — Tom Vanderbilt

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. — George Santayana

It's not supposed to make you distracted from your life, it's supposed to make you challenge the ongoing distraction with focused intention. Simply discussing how asleep we can be gives credence to the possibility of finding moments of true honest alertness. — Dan Mangan

In a period of less than 150 years, to progress from slavery to Pennsylvania Avenue speaks volumes about this family and our nation. Distracted by the rush of our everyday life, we might shrug it off today, but 100 years from now, historians will be discussing this precedent. — Megan Smolenyak

We can achieve even more than we could expect if we try to be less distracted by the fuss of life and concentrate more on developing some qualities or characteristic of our soul and character — Sunday Adelaja

When I take my last breath, will there be a wish that I had more stuff? I'll wish for only one thing, I think. That I loved better. That I had been better at loving and not being distracted by stuff or accomplishment. This life is so short and it will soon be over. What will we use it for? — Colin Beavan

The materialistic pattern of life is that where money predominates over everything. The non-materialistic life is that where money is just a means - happiness predominates, joy predominates; your own individuality predominates. You know who you are and where you are going, and you are not distracted. Then suddenly you will see your life has a meditative quality to it. — Rajneesh

Employment leaves you distracted — Sunday Adelaja

Most people are so distracted by their thoughts, so identified with the voices in their heads, they no longer feel the aliveness within them. To be unable to feel the life that animates the physical body, the very life that you are, is the greatest deprivation that can happen to you. — Eckhart Tolle

We are monumentally distracted by a pervasive technological culture that appears to have a life of its own, one that insists on our full attention, continually seducing us and pulling us away from the opportunity to experience directly the true meaning of our own lives. — Al Gore

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul. — Deepak Chopra

Sure, I acted in films in the Third Reich, entertainment films, which distracted countless people inside and outside Germany from daily life during war. — Johannes Heesters

When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility. — Neil Postman

make use of some such alarm signals as mad-doctors adopt in dealing with their distracted patients; as by beating several times on a glass with the blade of a knife, fixing them at the same time with a sharp word and a compelling glance, violent methods which the said doctors are apt to bring with them into their everyday life among the sane, either from force of professional habit or because they think the whole world a trifle mad. Their — Marcel Proust

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule ...
Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

I distracted Herbert by pretending to trip and break a bone. Ethan darted around to the red golf cart with a cocky smile on his face. He put the key in ignition, and the vehicle roared to life. "Hey," Herbert shouted, snapping his attention to Ethan.
I sprang up and ran up to Ethan. He pulled me in the cart and stomped on the gas pedal. We shot through the automatic doors with Herbert on our tail.
"Go faster!" I cheered.
My brother smacked the steering wheel. "I can't; it's a golf cart. — Erica Sehyun Song

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things - eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies - since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn. — Seneca.

If these distracted times prove anything, they prove that the greatest illusion is reliance upon the security and permanence of material possessions. We must search for some other coin. And we will discover that the treasure-house of education has stood intact and unshaken in the storm. The man of cultivated life has founded his house upon a rock. You can never take away the magnificent mansion of his mind. — John Cudahy

Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled - "
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please - someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact ... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait - don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy - incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck. — Jonathan Stroud

The people we invite on the train are those with whom we are prepared to be vulnerable and real, with whom there is no room for masks and games. They strengthen us when we falter and remind us of the journey's purpose when we become distracted by the scenery. And we do the same for them. Never let life's Iagos - flatterers, dissemblers - onto your train. We always get warnings from our heart and our intuition when they appear, but we are often too busy to notice. When you realize they've made it on board, make sure you usher them off the train; and as soon as you can, forgive them and forget them. There is nothing more draining than holding grudges. — Arianna Huffington

I think if I've learned anything about friendship, it's to hang in, stay connected, fight for them, and let them fight for you. Don't walk away, don't be distracted, don't be too busy or tired, don't take them for granted. Friends are part of the glue that holds life and faith together. Powerful stuff. — Jon Katz

..the good life warrants an ongoing struggle to be clear about what's important, and to seek it with lucidity and passion; not to be distracted by false ambitions, or waylaid by dissipated conscious — Damon Young

I want to have a lasting experience with God. Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I loose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don't want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to leave in this world and enjoy its delights, but also elevate myself to God. — Elizabeth Gilbert

In a fallen world there is a powerful pressure to constrict your life to the shape and size of your life. There is a compelling tendency to forget who you are and what you were made for. There is a tendency to be shortsighted, myopic, and easily distracted. There is a tendency to settle for less when you have been created for more. There is something expansive, glorious, and eternal that is meant to give direction to everything you do. — Paul David Tripp

The generations before you failed. They didn't stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn't ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it. — Paul Hawken

What good does it do to have all the riches of the world and all the world's pleasures? They will all disappear in the flash we call a human lifetime. Focusing on the pleasures of the world keeps the mind too distracted to search for the inner Self. — Rama Swami

Meditation is misunderstood as something you envision in your head, when in fact it is something to be seen with your own eyes. What you begin to see is that the place where you thought your life occurred - the cave of rumination and memory, the cauldron of anxiety and fear - isn't where your life takes place at all. Those mental recesses are where pain occurs, but life occurs elsewhere, in a place we are usually too preoccupied to notice, too distracted to see: right in front of our eyes. The point of meditation is to stop making things up and see things as they are. — Karen Maezen Miller

When you can't focus on one thing, you will be distracted by anything. — Debasish Mridha

It was also her nature that caused her letters to avoid emotional pitfalls and confine themselves to relating the events of her daily life in the utilitarian style of a ship's log. In reality they were distracted letters, intended to keep the coals alive without putting her hand in the fire, while Florentino Ariza burned himself alive in every line. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[Huxley's Perennial Philosophy is concerned with] the need to love the earth and respect nature instead of following the example of those who 'chopped down vast forests to provide the newsprint demanded by that universal literacy which was to make the world safe for intelligence and democracy, and got wholesale erosion, pulp magazines, and organs of Fascist, Communist, capitalist, and nationalist propaganda.' He attacked 'technological imperialism' and the mechanisation which was 'increasing the power of a minority to exercise a co-ersive control over the lives of their fellows' and 'the popular philosophy of life ... now moulded by advertising copy whose one idea is to persuade everybody to be as extroverted and uninhibitedly greedy as possible, since of course it is only the possessive, the restless, the distracted, who spend money on the things that advertisers want to sell. — Nicholas Murray

The Myth of Sisyphus makes us wonder if we too are like the ones who are so distracted making friends with important people, staying on top of the latest technology, getting good marks in school, and making lots of money, that we never pause to think:

What are we actually living for?

Sisyphus ended up opening his heart to questions of meaning, value and purpose. He himself decided it was best to just make the most of his short time on earth, however meaningless it all may be. Through Sisyphus, Camus is telling us that life is a joke, and the courageous ones will accept that and have a laugh along the way. I know many movies released these days that operate under the same premise. — Jon Morrison

She was beautiful in combat. I know that's a crazy thing to say, especially after we'd just climbed a sewage waterfall, but her gray eyes sparkled when she was fighting for her life. Her face shone like a goddess's, and believe me, I've seen goddesses. The way her Camp Half-Blood beads rested against her throat - Okay, sorry. Got a little distracted. — Rick Riordan

Do you ever wonder why often you can't have the things you want most? Perhaps if you got them in this life, they would distract you from Him. Perhaps He withholds some things that you love in this life to keep your heart from being distracted ... and then gives those things to you in the next. Forever. — Yasmin Mogahed

When we fail to tend to the fragilities of a flower as we become distracted by the noise of our minds, our plant is essentially dying. The quintessence of dying in the sense that we are failing to be mindful of the present moment, for life is the paradox of both living and dying concurrently. Just as we are living each moment, we are dying with every moment, and the essence of living is within each breath that ultimately comprises life as a whole. — Forrest Curran

I've trained all my life not to be distracted by distractions. — Nik Wallenda

As we stand before this sacred doorway [the doorway to meaning], we realize its response to us is conditional, albeit only in the sense that it's reflective. If we stand before it arrogant and haughty, indeed the door will remained locked. If we stand before it in doubt, it will disappear. If we knock upon it distracted, our minds somewhere else, we fail to see it open. Anyone in the world can go through it, and there could never be a key. Yet it opens only when we approach it in a certain, truthful way. Otherwise, we may not notice its openness and its infinite offering again and again. — Tehya Sky

Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, XII
Bless the spirit that makes connections,
for truly we live in what we imagine.
Clocks move along side our real life
with steps that are ever the same.
Though we do not know our exact location,
we are held in place by what links us.
Across trackless distances
antennas sense each other.
Pure attention, the essence of the powers!
Distracted by each day's doing,
how can we hear the signals?
Even as the farmer labors
there where the seed turns into summer,
it is not his work. It is Earth who gives. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don't drink too much, don't smoke, and don't get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health. — Ben Goldacre

This is what I asked for, and in this day and age that's what actually goes on. But what hurts me the most is that I work just as hard as any other actress around my age, like Scarlett Johansson, but I just don't get the opportunities that they get because people are so distracted by the mess that I created in my life. — Lindsay Lohan

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I'm enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier. — Vikram Seth

You can be distracted by your love life, by the baseball game, movies, by the nonsense. "Can I get my kid into this private school? Can I get this girl to go out with me Saturday night? Am I going to get the promotion in my office?" All this stuff, but in the end the universe burns out. So I think it's completely meaningless. — Woody Allen

How impossible it is for strong healthy people to understand the way in which bodily malaise and suffering eats at the root of one's life! The philosophy that is true - the religion that is strength to the healthy - is constantly emptiness to one when the head is distracted and every sensation is oppressive. — George Eliot

Distractions ... that's what makes up a big part of our lives, y'know? The distractions. Lots of times, we're like moths fluttering around a porch light. Bugs'll swarm around that bult, all distracted, forgetting in their minuscule insect brains that there's something else they should be doing, like biting people or making more bugs. We're like that, although our brains are generally larger ... Human distractions are bigger, better lightbulbs. We got TVs and computers. We got blinking casino lights and live bands on cruise ships playing yet another version of 'Hot, Hot, Hot' until you wanna puke, but in the end, they're all just porch light. So we go from one bright bulb to another until we hit the bug zapper, and it's all over. — Neal Shusterman

You're my angel, Bianca. You've exorcised my demons. I don't have nightmares when I'm with you. I don't have to work seventy hour work weeks to keep my mind distracted. My life has become more than work and emotionless affairs. You make me a better man. — R.K. Lilley

But I hope you will
use your brains. Use your brains. Don't be distracted. Once you make that mistake, of being
distracted, over a man, your life will never be your own. You will get the burden, a woman always does. — Alice Munro

Your life is too valuable to waste being distracted. — Joel Osteen

Look at how beautiful life is, and just keep looking until you see it. You don't see what is in front of you because you're so distracted by your thoughts. — Frederick Lenz

Now was the time to get everything back on track, to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with the rest of my life before I got all distracted by a soul mate with a bod for sin. — Madelyn Alt

The first egg is white. I move the eggcup a little, so it's now in the watery sunlight that comes through the window and falls, brightening, waning, brightening again, on the tray. The shell of the egg is smooth but also grained; small pebbles of calcium are defined by the sunlight, like craters on the moon. It's a barren landscape, yet perfect; it's the sort of desert the saints went into, so their minds would not be distracted by profusion. I think that this is what God must look like: an egg. The life of the moon may not be on the surface, but inside. The egg is glowing now, as if it had an energy of its own. To look at the egg gives me intense pleasure. The sun goes and the egg fades. I — Margaret Atwood

With mind distracted, never thinking, "Death is coming,"
To slave away on the pointless business of mundane life,
And then to come out empty
it is a tragic error. (116)
trans by Robert Thurman — Huston Smith

I guess I was actually sort of grateful that someone else was taking over my life. I mean, I'm obviously pretty terrible at managing my own life, so it was nice to know that it was in good hands. But also it was nice to have all these concrete tasks to do and be sort of distracted and consumed by them. It kept me from thinking about every depressing and weird thing that was going on at that time. — Jesse Andrews

If I were Satan and wanted to destroy a society, I think I would stage a full blown blitz on its women. I would keep them so distraught and distracted that they would never find the calming strength and serenity for which their sex has always been known. He has effectively done that, catching us in the crunch of trying to be superhuman instead of realistically striving to reach our indiviual purpose and unique God-given potential within such diversity. He tauntingly teases us that if we don't have it all- fame, fortune, families, and fun- and have it every minute all the time, we have been short changed; we are second class citizens in the race of life. You'd have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to get these messages in today's world, and as a sex we are struggling, and our society struggles. Drugs, teenage pregnancies, divorce, family violence, and suicide are some of the every-increasing side effecs of our collective life in the express lane. — Patricia T. Holland

It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me. — Fanny Crosby

There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student's mind, to spiritualize his life. — Mahatma Gandhi

Shallowness and ignorance have been our lot in the mass consumer societies we inhabit, where we were too distracted to act politically, apart from periodically deputing political elites to take life-and-death decisions on our behalf. — Pankaj Mishra

Today, all her mother's judgements had been proved false. She wasn't plain, but pretty. She wasn't distracted and awkward, but confident and a crack shot.
Most of all, Minerva was not hopeless. She had twenty pounds. She had an important scientific discovery.
And she had Colin, the most handsome, charming devil in England, coming fast on her heels. Save for the ransom-minded highwaymen and angry magistrate's son chasing after them...
Life had never been so good. — Tessa Dare

takes. We get off track when we make our walks with Christ about how we are walking versus how God is leading. We need to pay attention to His Spirit to be led by Him on a daily basis. If we are distracted by the things of this life or our weariness and afflictions, we can get off course. When we suffer trials, we can become distracted by the circumstances and wallow in fear or sorrow. But if we refocus on the Lord, He comforts us and gives us a reason for rejoicing again during our trial. — Adam Houge

I think a lot of times we can get distracted and not be in the moment with people and be missing all the life happening in the moment. — Angela Kinsey

Right now-whether you're in writing courses getting "paid" in credit for writing, or burdened and distracted by earning a living and changing diapers-figure out how to make writing an integral part of your life. Publication is good, and gives you the courage to go on, but publication is not as important as the act of writing. — Janet Burroway

Or she would look at him with a sullen expression, once again he would see before him a face worthy of figuring in Botticelli's Life of Moses, he would place her in it, he would give her neck the necessary inclination; and when he had well and truly painted her in distemper, in the fifteenth century, on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, the idea that she had nevertheless remained here, by the piano, in the present moment, ready to be kissed and possessed, the idea of her materiality and her life would intoxicate him with such force that, his eyes distracted, his jaw tensed as though to devour her, he would swoop down upon that Botticelli virgin and begin pinching her cheeks. — Marcel Proust

The moment had gone. You're probably thinking, How much concentration does a man need to throw himself off the top of a high building? Well, you'd be surprised. Before Maureen arrived I'd been in the zone; I was in a place where it would have been easy to push myself off. I was entirely focused on all the reasons I was up there in the first place; I understood with horrible clarity the impossibility of attempting to resume life down on the ground. But the conversation with her had distracted me, pulled me back out into the world, into the cold and the wind and the noise of the thumping bass seven floors below. — Nick Hornby

Remember, the mind likes to window shop. It fancies the life in this boutique, then wants to try on the boots in another. But the soul invests all of itself. It's not as casual or as distracted by fashion, sales, promises or ease of acquisition. It's not interested in possibility. It pitches toward destiny. That's why you will never know a sense of ease, even when you come up with answers, unless you choose to listen to the answer that will take away all questions. — Tama Kieves

There was more than getting justice for a wronged woman," Michael added. "I also met you. One of the most extraordinary experiences in my life." Nothing had been the same for him since.
"Not much remarkable about that," she demurred.
"You sought out Nemesis not for yourself, but for your friend. It was bloody amazing what you did during that job. When Nemesis needed your help again, you answered the call. Just tonight, you'd been afraid but willing to make the climb down the side of Covington Hall. Damned extraordinary." Thank God he'd been too distracted by climbing to think about the fact that she'd had her arms and legs wrapped around him, her body tight against his.
A corner of her mouth turned up. "Oh, when you put it like that, maybe I am rather special."
"Sodding right." A silence fell. But he wasn't willing to let it linger — Zoe Archer

We want to make an impact on the world, but we end up making or selling playthings that are developed to keep us distracted and designed to deconstruct. We have turned the activities that were meant to be the stuff of life into mere means of subsisting in it. — Susan Neiman

I don't think we realise just how fast we go until you stop for a minute and realise just how loud and how hectic your life is, and how easily distracted you can get. — Meg Ryan

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away. — Tom Noonan

Dorrie gave Larry's hand an excited, distracted squeeze that said: almost home. They were about to be matter-of-factly claimed by familiar streets and houses and the life they'd chosen or which had chosen them. — Carol Shields

We were fortunate his brief psychic vision distracted him from what his fingertips could have told him about my face.
Of course we were aware that temporary clairvoyance was a lame and unlikely explanation. The ordering of this world, however is so abstruce, so deep and complex, most explanations that people to make sense of moments of strange experience are inadequate. Our very existence as thinking creatures is an astonishment that cant be solved. Every human cell, with its thousands of protein chains, is more complex than a 747 or the largest cruise ship, in fact more complex than the two combined. All life on earth, in its extravagant variety, offers itself for study, but though we probe to ever deeper layers of its structure, the meaning eludes us.
There is no end of wonders and mysteries: fireflies and music boxes, the stars that outnumber all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the world. — Dean Koontz

Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarily deflected from your chosen path. — Nick Hornby

I look forward, not to what lies ahead of me in this life and will surely pass away, but to my eternal goal. I am intent upon this one purpose, not distracted by other aims, and with this goal in view I press on, eager for the prize, God's heavenly summons. Then I shall listen to the sound of Your praises and gaze at Your beauty ever present, never future, never past. But now my years are but sighs. You, O Lord, are my only solace. You, my Father, are eternal. But I am divided between time gone by and time to come, and its course is a mystery to me. My thoughts, the intimate life of my soul, are torn this way and that in the havoc of change. And so it will be until I am purified and melted by the fire of Your love and fused into one with You. — Augustine Of Hippo

Ideas give life meaning. Our minds need ideas the way
our bodies need food. We are starved for visions, hungry for understanding. We
are caught up in the routines of life, distracted occasionally by those activities we
call "recreation" and "entertainment." What we as a nation have lost is the joy of
thinking, the challenge of understanding, the inspirations as well as the consolations
of philosophy. — Robert C. Solomon

Looking into the spirit of others is sometimes like looking into a pond. Though we aim to see what's deep in the bottom, we are often distracted by our own reflection. — Katina Ferguson

If I was writing a lifestyle book it would have the same advice on every page, and you'd know it all already. Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, and live your whole life in every way as well as you can: exercise regularly as part of your daily routine, avoid obesity, don't drink too much, don't smoke, and don't get distracted from the real, basic, simple causes of ill health. But as we will see, even these things are hard to do on your own, and in reality require wholesale social and political changes. — Ben Goldacre

With our minutes and days and decades, we build houses and savings accounts and busy calendars full of activity. And in some deeper way, we build our reputations and friendships and invest in our kids and careers. We are looking for this life to matter. No, we are actually looking for ourselves to matter. So we keep so busy, so distracted, so in love with everything but our invisible, patient, jealous God. Christ said, "So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33). This covers literally everything. In essence, "Stop eating the flowers! Wake up — Jennie Allen

I think, on both sides of the camera or the novel: Distraction. I'm obsessed with: Can I get this actress or my third act to work? I'm distracted. I'm interested in that so I don't sit home and think, "Gee, life is meaningless. We're all going to die. The universe is pulling apart at breakneck speed." — Woody Allen

So often we are too lazy or too distracted to see with care. Images come into our retinas, and our minds have already interpreted them. We do not see without our biases, our habits of life and thought. — Gunilla Brodde Norris

I aggressively run into things, back up into things, have no depth perception, often forget which buttons and knobs do what, and am easily distracted. But enough about my sex life! Back to my driving skills! — Tyler Oakley

keeping our focus on God instead of the world around us will enable us to endure the trials of life much better than if we get distracted from God." "Hmm, a good topic." She gave him a small smile. "It kind of fits our situation, — E.A. West

To live in the city of crowds and traffic and constant noise, to be always striving, to be in the ceaseless competition for money and status and power, perhaps distracted the mind until it could no longer see - and forgot - the all that is. Or maybe, because of the pace and pressure of that life, sanity depended on blinding oneself to the manifold miracles, astonishments, wonders, and enigmas that comprised the true world. — Dean Koontz

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

I wish this story were different. I wish it were more civilized. I wish it showed me in a better light, if not happier, than at least more active, less hesitant, less distracted by trivia. I wish it had more shape. I wish t were about love, or about sudden realizations important to one's life, or even about sunsets, birds, rainstorms, or snow. I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story. I'm sorry it's in fragments, like a body caught in crossfire or pulled apart by force. But there is nothing I can do to change it. — Margaret Atwood

When Verlaine and Rimbaud were young," [Snyder] said, they were protesting the iron-grip bourgeois rationality had on all aspects of nineteenth-century French culture - the manners, the view of reality, and the exclusion of 'the wild' from public life. Rationality in business and society were dominant values. 'Deranging the senses' was one strategy artists like Verlaine and Rimbaud employed to break free of that.

"Today," he continued, "the bourgeoisie is sociopathic, overindulged, distracted, spoiled beyond measure, and unable to restrain its gluttony, even in the face of pending planetary destruction. In the face of such a threat, it has, by necessity, become the responsibility of the artist to model health and sanity. — Peter Coyote

We were made to be distracted by life, by story. — Donald Miller

Oh! To rationalize oneself into matrimony ... Oh! To decide something so grave in life 'after mature consideration'! Choose the color of a dress after a thousand hesitations, but for God's sake, get married without reflecting on it! That's the grace I wish I wish for you. May you even be so distracted that day that you walk past the registry office without remembering to stop there. — Colette

Artists can have greater access to reality; they can see patterns and details and connections that other people, distracted by the blur of life, might miss. Just sharing that truth can be a very powerful thing. — Jay-Z

My life is parallel to a horse race. They have blinders on to keep them from being distracted in the race and keep them focused on winning the race. That's kind of like my life. Focus on the goal, not the things coming at me from the side. — Reggie Bush

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. — Lemony Snicket

He [Hern] calls his center the Boulder Abortion Clinic and he said specifically that he didn't want to hide that word. I'm deeply opposed to the politicization of language and try to avoid it when I possibly can - I don't like being manipulated by terms like pro-life or pro-choice. To me, abortionist should be as neutral as podiatrist. But again, maybe it was one battle too many, because it certainly distracted his attention from what I thought was a really sympathetic piece. — John H Richardson

Textures, places, and personalities are important on the soul path, which feels more like an initiation into the multiplicity of life than a single-minded assault upon enlightenment. As the soul makes its unsteady way, delayed by obstacles and distracted by all kinds of charms, aimlessness is not overcome. The wish for progress may have to be set aside. — Thomas Moore

Uncompromising trust in the love of God inspires us to thank God for the spiritual darkness that envelops us, for the loss of income, for the nagging arthritis that is so painful, and to pray from the heart, Abba, into your hands I entrust my body, mind, and spirit and this entire day - morning, afternoon, evening, and night. Whatever you want of me, I want of me, falling into you and trusting in you in the midst of my life. Into your heart I entrust my heart, feeble, distracted, insecure, uncertain. Abba, unto you I abandon myself in Jesus our Lord. Amen. — Brennan Manning

the great mass of humanity distracted by the trappings and fabricated urgency of modern life. — Jamling Tenzing Norgay

Love. It's the complex chemistry of a blind heart and a distracted mind. Love is a shapeshifter. Love walks along the same path as hate. Love makes us whole. Love makes us weak. Love drives us to insanity. Love can be a curse. Love is a miracle. — Julie Anderson

The best advice I can give is to ignore advice. Life is too short to be distracted by the opinions of others. — Russell Edson

Forward thinkers create a plan, focus on the plan, and execute the plan. Procrastinators just talk about the plan, get distracted with the minor things and postpone the plan. - We don't need time management, we need life management with purpose. — Farshad Asl

And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the "What's Wrong?" pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don't exactly know what happened that night after — Hannah Brencher

I felt like I wasn't living thoroughly enough - I was distracted in ways I wouldn't be if I'd been born in 1929. — Miranda July

We're distracted and we let the door slam on the person behind us, we trip over curbs as we're texting, we're...sedentary, weighed down, collapsed over the laptop. ...We've forgotten how to move through life with grace. — Sarah L. Kaufman

Your heart of devotion and obedience is not in vain. Who knows but God how many people have come near to you and were forever changed simply by the fragrance of his love in you? Who knows but God if he will put you before kings and leaders to speak the truth, redirecting the future of nations? Who knows when that small crack in the dam of our enemy's plans will give way and God's glory will truly cover the earth as the sea? Do not become distracted or discouraged by the death around you. Death must always give way when the life of Christ enters the picture. — Amy Layne Litzelman

To live more voluntarily is to live more deliberately, intentionally and purposefully - in short, it is to live more consciously. We cannot be deliberate when we are distracted from life. We cannot be intentional when we are not paying attention. We cannot be purposeful when we are not being present. — Duane Elgin

We even had dessert, which seemed to me to be pushing the distract-them-with-food ploy a little far, particularly since neither Deborah nor I was at all distracted. But it was quite good food, so it would have been barbaric of me to complain. Of course, Deborah had worked very hard her whole life to become barbaric, so when the waiter placed an enormous chocolate thing in front of Chutsky, who turned to Debs with two forks and said, "Well . . ." she took the opportunity to fling a spoon into the center of the table. — Jeff Lindsay