Quotes & Sayings About Not Dwelling On Things

Meditate on the unique relationship between Christians. Psalm 133:1 proclaims the goodness and pleasantness of dwelling together in unity; there are some things in the world that are good but not pleasant and others that are pleasant but not good. But to live in peace is both pleasant and good. — Thomas Brooks

From the ancient dwelling there came always a dignified, unobtrusive sadness; now stronger, now fainter, - like the aromatic smell which the dwarf cedars gave out in the sun, - but always present, a part of the air one breathed. At night, when Thea dreamed about the canyon, - or in the early morning when she hurried toward it, anticipating it, - her conception of it was of yellow rocks baking in sunlight, the swallows, the cedar smell, and that peculiar sadness - a voice out of the past, not very loud, that went on saying a few simple things to the solitude eternally. — Willa Cather

Self-affection is the real dwelling to which we must always return with a view to a faithfulness to ourselves and an ability to welcome the other as different. — Luce Irigaray

People are either dwelling too much on the past or worrying too much on the future by totally forgetting the present. — Tim I. Gurung

I'm strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity - taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages. — Krista Tippett

Your mind must be at its best for God before it becomes His dwelling place. — T. B. Joshua

She thinks of him lying there, the beautiful moment never arriving, never ruined, never disappointing, over. It must be sublime dwelling in that house of longing, forever poised on desire's trembling tip, before everything is wrecked. — Susan Johnson

I have decided the two choices open to me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earthly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I believe I have done, by dwelling on them. So, no more of that. — Marilynne Robinson

It must not be thought, however, that in pagan Ireland Fairyland was altogether conceived as a Hades or place of the dead. We have already seen that in some of its types and aspects it was inherently nothing of the sort; as when, for example, it came to be confused with the Land of the Gods. In all likelihood these separate paradises and deadlands of a nature so various were the result of the stratified beliefs of successive races dwelling in the same region. A conquering race would scarcely credit that its heroes would, after death, betake themselves to the deadland of the beaten and enslaved aborigines. The gods of vanquished races might be conceived as presiding over spheres of the dead for which their victors would have nothing but contempt, and which, because of that very contempt, might come to be conceived as hells or places of a debased and grovelling kind, pestiferous regions which only the spirits of despised "natives" or the undesirable might inhabit. — Lewis Spence

3And in those days a whirlwind carried me off from the earth, and set me down at the end of the heavens. 4There I saw another vision, the dwelling-places of the holy and the righteous. 5Here my eyes saw their dwellings with His righteous angels and the holy. And they asked, interceded, and prayed for the children of men, and righteousness flowed before them like water, and mercy like dew upon the earth. Thus it is among them forever. — Ken Johnson

A dog sees no point in dwelling on things that have happened; the important thing is that they are not happening now. In that respect, they have something to teach us: we so often feel that then is now, and this leads us to prolong the suffering of yesterday into the suffering of today. Dogs do not do that. — Alexander McCall Smith

Those with a high level of confidence may have as many or more weaknesses than those with low self-esteem. The difference is this; instead of dwelling on their handicaps, they compensate for them by dwelling on their strengths. — Alan Loy McGinnis

You're always going to be too young for something important to you, too old for something else, and the timing is just not going to be right for a third set of things. That's life, and you can make yourself crazy by dwelling on that. Or you can figure out what you are the right age for, and what the timing is right for, and celebrate those things. Where do you suppose happiness lies? — Aaron Allston

The practice of concentration is like acquiring a lampshade to help us concentrate our mind on something. While doing sitting or walking meditation, cutting the future, cutting the past, dwelling in the present time, we develop our own power of concentration. With that power of concentration, we can look deeply into the problem. This is insight meditation.
First we are aware of the problem, focusing all our attention on the problem, and then we look deeply into it in order to understand its real nature [ ... ]. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A more realistic perception of our relation to others, in particular our similarities to them, injects a little humility into our self-serving biases. Admitting that we are disposable and irrelevant in the grander scheme of things may not be for everyone, but I find nothing more empowering. It should drown out your anxieties rather than inhibit your passions. Accepting your imperfections and limitations allows you to stop dwelling on past mistakes, and pushes you to enjoy making the most of every moment moving forward. — Erman Misirlisoy

Instead of dwelling on the failures of today focus on the victories of tomorrow. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Then to Silvia let us sing that Silvia is excelling. She excels each mortal thing upon the dull earth dwelling. — William Shakespeare

Jesus himself is the new Temple at the heart of the new creation, against that day when the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea. And so this Temple, like the wilderness tabernacle, is a temple on the move, as Jesus's people go out, in the energy of the Spirit, to be the dwelling of God in each place, to anticipate that eventual promise by their common and cross-shaped life and work. — N. T. Wright

These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War. — W.E.B. Du Bois

We try to live every moment like that, dwelling peacefully in the present moment, and respond to events with compassion. — Nhat Hanh

And showed him to be a villa-dwelling dependent and not an ascetic cave-dwelling guerrilla. — Christopher Hitchens

I beg your pardon, but don't cry for me, Argentina. A little rain's bound to fall on those roses of yours - a dribble, a drizzle, a deluge. Think you're the only one with wet flowers?
A tear rolls down my cheek and some of the heaviness I've been carrying trickles out with it.
Why me?
Why pain? Why suffering? Why heartache?
Because we're a forgetful bunch, always busy with the daily grind. We overlook the good things until we're confronted with the bad. There but for the grace of God...and all that jazz.
Life is how we measure it. And people have different currencies. Some are tangible. Others are carried in your heart. Like the woman beside me, I've been dwelling on what I've lost, not what I have. Her riches vanished in a moment. Mine, thankfully, remain - wonderful childhood memories, a caring husband, a baby on the way.
Wet roses? They'll dry. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the rest of my garden. — Roxy Boroughs

Isn't it awesome that God's Word says ordinary life can be beautiful? However, there's just one thing - not ten things, not fifteen things - that brings meaning to everything else. Don't set your life up. Don't think, "When I get my family, or my house, or my finances, then I'll have everything set up for me and life will rock!" It will not! It doesn't. The harder you try to set up satisfaction for yourself apart from God, the less you'll have it. Only a central focus on Jesus Christ and all He said and did (and dwelling in His presence) can be the one thing that puts everything else in order. Even when it seems like it's falling apart. — James MacDonald

Often when we connect with our values, we realise that we've been neglecting them for a long time and this can be very painful. But remember, this is not an excuse to beat yourself up! ('What a hypocrite I am! I say I value doing all these different things, yet I'm not doing any of them! I'm pathetic!') All of us lose touch with our values from time to time. Dwelling on those times is pointless because there's nothing we can do to change the past. What's important is to connect with our values here and now and to use them to guide and motivate our current actions. So if your mind does start beating up on you, simply thank it. — Russ Harris

Jesus doesn't participate in the rat race. He's into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling - all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace. Words used to describe us being with Him. — Lysa TerKeurst

The very act of looking for evil in others develops evil in those who look. By dwelling upon the faults of others, we are changed into the same image. — Ellen G. White

The weather was cheerful, the breath of spring animating. She watched the swelling of the buds - the peeping heads of the crocuses - the opening of the anemones and wild wind-flowers, and at last, the sweet odour of the new-born violets, with all the interest created by novelty; not that she had not observed and watched these things before, with transitory pleasure, but now the operations of nature filled all her world; the earth was no longer merely the dwelling place of her acquaintance, the stage on which the business of society was carried on, but the mother of life - the temple of God - the beautiful and varied store-house of bounteous nature. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Allons! whoever you are come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and incomprehensible at first,
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling we cannot remain here,
However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must not anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to receive it but a little while."
-from "Song of the Open Road — Walt Whitman

One thing I learned in here is the past is for learning. It's not for punishing others or yourself. It's not for dwelling on and getting angry about things you can't change. It's for learning how to do better in the rest of your life. And being grateful you get another chance to try and do better. — Nicole Green

The relationship between man and space is none other than dwelling, strictly thought and spoken. — Martin Heidegger

A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour,
Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within
His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog
Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade.
Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws,
No more sits listening by his den, but steals
Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field,
And crops its juicy-blossoms. — William C. Bryant

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. — Francine Prose

The problem is, first take your eyes off the problem and focus on a solution. — Anthony Liccione

I'm not sitting somewhere dwelling on the past. I'm not fretting or obsessing about something in the future. — Jennifer Aniston

So when you inhale and exhale, notice your breath and realize God is dwelling in your chest. — Trinka Polite

Our lives are full of supposes. Suppose this should happen, or suppose that should happen; what could we do; how could we bear it? But, if we are living in the high tower of the dwelling place of God, all these supposes will drop out of our lives. We shall be quiet from the fear of evil, for no threatenings of evil can penetrate into the high tower of God. — Hannah Whitall Smith

After travelling a few miles, he fell asleep; and Emily, who had put two or three books into the carriage, on leaving La Vallee, had now the leisure for looking into them. She sought for one, in which Valancourt had been reading the day before, and hoped for the pleasure of re-tracing a page, over which the eyes of a beloved friend had lately passed, of dwelling on the passages, which he had admired, and of permitting them to speak to her in the language of his own mind, and to bring himself to her presence. — Eliza Parsons

Bathed in light, submerged in sound and rapt in feeling, the sentient body, at once both perceiver and producer, traces the paths of the world's becoming in the very course of contributing to its ongoing renewal. Here, surely, lies the essence of what it means to dwell. It is, literally to be embarked upon a movement along a way of life. The perceiver-producer is thus a wayfarer, and the mode of production is itself a trail blazed or a path followed. Along such paths, lives are lived, skills developed, observations made and understandings grown. But if this is so, then we can no longer suppose that dwelling is emplaced in quite the way Heidegger imagined, in an opening akin to a clearing in the forest. To be, I would now say, is not to be in place but to be along paths. The path, and not the place, is the primary condition of being, or rather of becoming. — Tim Ingold

Goal: The next time you go through a trying time, find the ways in which you can grow and learn instead of dwelling on your suffering. — Demi Lovato

The concept of country, homeland, dwelling place becomes simplified as "the environment"
that is, what surrounds us, we have already made a profound division between it an ourselves. We have given up the understanding
dropped it out of our language and so out of our thought
that we and our country create one another, depend on one another, are literally part of one another; that our land passes in and out of our bodies just as our bodies pass in and out of our land; that as we and our land are part of one another, so all who are living as neighbors here, human and plant and animal, are part of one another, and so cannot possibly flourish alone; that, therefore, our culture must be our response to our place, our culture and our place are images of each other and inseparable from each other, and so neither can be better than they other. — Wendell Berry

The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. — Warren Buffett

Like the fires caught and fixed by a great colourist from the impermanence of the atmosphere and the sun, so that they should enter and adorn a human dwelling, they invited me, those chrysanthemums, to put away all my sorrows and to taste with a greedy rapture during that tea-time hour the all-too-fleeting pleasures of November, whose intimate and mysterious splendour they set ablaze all around me. — Marcel Proust

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream. And that that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. Who among you does not feel that his power to love is boundless? And yet who does not feel that very love, though boundless, encompassed within the centre of his being, and moving not from love thought to love thought, nor from love deeds to other love deeds? And is not time even as love is, undivided and paceless? — Khalil Gibran

Your house is not your home.
My world is not your world.
Your thoughts are your home
where you're dwelling all along. — Debasish Mridha

In the beginning, Orion was not considered to be a hunter but as the heretic cult grew, its adherent dared to war the upper heavens and were set off on a quest for hunting the lion (i.e., Sphinx) in its own dwelling. This is literally what 'Orion' the word means, the 'dwelling of the lion'. — Ibrahim Ibrahim

Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains. — Raymond Chandler

Be content with what you have Be satisfied with your dwelling place to accommodate your enterprise, Restrain your tongue, And shed tears of regret regarding past sins you committed knowingly, and those you do not recognize. — Abdullah, Son Of Masud

He who wishes to see how the soul inhabits the body should look to see how that body uses its daily surroundings. If the dwelling is dirty and neglected, the body will be kept by its soul in the same condition, dirty and neglected. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Time that is spent dwelling on the past will surely continue in your present moment - and the future. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

Dwelling on him would make him a bigger part of my life than I want him to be. — Richard Paul Evans

Dwelling on your problems doesn't fix them; it just makes you an expert at them. — Tommy Newberry

And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling within the bounds of that first moment which scattered the stars into space. — Kahlil Gibran