Noticing Everything Quotes & Sayings

Our old people noticed this from the beginning. They said that the white man lived in a world of cages, and that if we didn't look out, they would make us live in cages too.
So we started noticing. Everything looked like cages. Your clothes fit like cages. Your houses looked like cages. You put your fences around your yards so they looked like cages. Everything was a cage. You turned the land into cages. Little squares.
Then after you had all these cages you made a government to protect these cages. And that government was all cages. All laws about what you couldn't do. The only freedom you had was inside your own cage. Then you wondered why you weren't happy and didn't feel free. You made all the cages, the you wondered why you didn't feel free. — Kent Nerburn

I try to be upbeat. I read this book which tells you to write down everything that you're grateful for each day. Now I'm constantly noticing all the little things that make me joyful. — Naomie Harris

Everything he saw was unspeakably menacing and horrible; and whenever one of the organic entities appeared by its motions to be noticing him, he felt a stark, hideous fright which generally jolted him awake. — H.P. Lovecraft

So that's it. I've told you everything I know. Think clearly and think for yourself. Learn to use language to express those thoughts. Love somebody with all your heart. And with everyone, whether you love them or not, find out if you can be helpful. But really, it's even simpler than that. After all this time, and all these talks in public and in private, I think I get it now. If I were taking my friend Arnold's suggestion and spoke from my deathbed, I think I know what I'd say. I see now that I had my meaning all along, I just had to notice it. The meaning of life ... is life. Not noticing life is what's meaningless, even down to the last second. — Alan Alda

And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Page No. 31, Freedom Climbers — Rainer Maria Rilke

Next you just relax and hold really still and concentrate on your breathing. You don't have to make a big deal about it. It's not like you're thinking about breathing, but you're not not thinking about it either. It's kind of like when you're sitting on the beach and watching the waves lapping up on the sand or some little kids you don't know playing in the distance. You're just noticing everything that's going on, both inside you and outside you, including your breathing and the kids and the waves and the sand. And that's basically it. — Ruth Ozeki

Your happiness, you're wasting your time. You must be fearless enough to give yourself the love you didn't receive. Begin noticing how every day brings a new opportunity for your growth. How buried disagreements with your mother show up in arguments with your spouse. How unconscious feelings of unworthiness appear in everything you do (and don't do). All these experiences are your life's way of urging you to leave the past behind and make yourself whole. Pay attention. Every choice gives you a chance to pave your own road. Keep moving. Full speed ahead. — Oprah Winfrey

They walked for a while, all silent in their thoughts, until they reached the car and Alec drew a fine telescope from his shirt and handed it to Milo.
"Carry this with you on your journey," he said softly, "for there is much worth noticing that often escapes the eye. Through it you can see everything from the tender moss in a sidewalk crack to the glow of the farthest star - and, most important of all, you can see things as they really are, not just as they seem to be. It's my gift to you. — Norton Juster

What evidence is there that we've adequately empathized with the other person? First, when an individual realizes that everything going on within has received full empathic understanding, they will experience a sense of relief. We can become aware of this phenomenon by noticing a corresponding release of tension in our own body. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

I cannot find any patience for those people who believe that you start writing when you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you put down your pen again; a writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. Just as I believe that a painter cannot sit down to his morning coffee without noticing what color it is, so a writer cannot see an odd little gesture without putting a verbal description to it, and ought never to let a moment go by undescribed. — Shirley Jackson

I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for the answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. — Rainer Maria Rilke

The things you think are your weakness are often really your strengths. The things you think are your strengths are what trip you up. Everything you take seriously doesn't matter in the end. Everything important in your life is the stuff you're not even noticing right now. And ... you really don't have to worry so much. Everything's going to be fine. — Suzanne Harper

Honey, what happened to your arm?" Rita frowned, reached over, and ran her fingers across the bruises. "Both of them!" she added, noticing the other arm. The sleeves of her cover-up had ridden up. Meridith pulled them down. "Oh. It's nothing. A guest caught me by surprise last night." "What? Did he attack you, Meridith?" "Sort of, but Jake came and, well, kind of punched him, and everything's fine now." "Jake . . . ?" "The contractor I told you about." "Oh, right. Thank God he was there! Did you call the police?" "No. Jake booted him and his friends from the house." "But are you okay? You must have been terrified!" Meridith nodded. "I was. I was so relieved when Jake showed up. It was late at night, and I was alone on the beach - won't do that again." She gave a dry laugh. "I'm just glad you're okay. This Jake guy seems like quite the hero." She'd only vocalized what Meridith had been thinking. "We're lucky to have him around. — Denise Hunter

It's a well-known fact. It's well known at the organic level, like a lot of other well-known facts which overrule the observations of the senses. This is because if people went around noticing everything that was going on all the time, no one would ever get anything done.* — Terry Pratchett

I was scared for my life, but at the same time I couldn't help noticing how bright everything was, the ice not really blue at all but shot through with spangled points of rosy light so dazzling that it made me crinkle up my eyes as though I had something to smile about, and there was a shadow cast by the Owner's shoulder that washed from seagreen to purple as he twisted in his traces. — Beryl Bainbridge

No doubt she'd thought she was doing him a kindness, urging him to kick up his heels and loosen his too-tight cravat and learn to savor careless pleasures. As though he hadn't heard such urgings before, from every feckless acquaintance made uncomfortable by his example of propriety, or every heedless one who sailed through life never noticing that it was vigilant people, the people standing back from the merriment, who stomped out the fiery raisins dropped by others and kept everything from going up in flames. — Cecilia Grant

When it seems just the right people are noticing you and your gifting, it is important to realize that it is the Lord who is directing their eyes and not your abilities gaining their attention. Everything we have has been given us from the Lord. — Anna Blanc

So let me get this straight," he says. "Death is the only destination and nothing else is real because it's not perfect or final?"
I roll my eyes. "Okay, Nietzsche. That's not exactly what I said."
"I just think people are always doing that."
"Doing what?"
"They're always asking themselves, 'Where am I going?' but they're never looking around and asking, 'Where am I?' Everything's about what's going to be next instead of noticing what's happening right now. But the now is the only thing that's actually real. — Autumn Doughton

Every night before you go to bed, review your day and either write down or mentally note ten things you can be grateful for in your life. These can be everything from the beautiful flowers in your garden to the fact that your heart is beating to the hour-long visit from your persnickety neighbor that taught you to be happy that you don't have her life. Stopping and noticing throughout the day all the things that you can be grateful for is a great way to keep your frequency high at all times. So try and remember to do it all day long, but at the very least, make it part of your evening routine. — Jen Sincero

The true Renaissance person is endowed with panoramic attention.... The habit of noticing the ensemble of everything and its constituent parts is a matter of will, not of innate aptitude. It involves the conscious noticing of things and the gaps that separate and connect them. — Christy Wampole

Anger and fatigue well up all over the country. Fall has arrives, with its biting winds, its long rainy evenings. The gloom matches our overall mood. It mirrors the minds of the adults. And we children absorb everything, we drink everything in without anyone noticing, until the moment we get squeezed. We're baby sponges, you can't just wring us out, you have to be careful what you soak us in. Even washed, rinsed, dried a hundred times over, traces still remain in us. — Marzena Sowa

You are so young, you have not even begun, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I noticed." Lazaro slowly approached her near the bed. "I should be focused on a thousand other things right now. Instead, here I am. Noticing everything about you, Melena. — Lara Adrian

Scheele, it was said, never forgot anything if it had to do with chemistry. He never forgot the look, the feel, the smell of a substance, or the way it was transformed in chemical reactions, never forgot anything he read, or was told, about the phenomena of chemistry. He seemed indifferent, or inattentive, to most things else, being wholly dedicated to his single passion, chemistry. It was this pure and passionate absorption in phenomena-noticing everything, forgetting nothing-that constituted Scheele's special strength. — Oliver Sacks

Love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. — Krista Tippett

A tormenting thought: as of a certain point, history was no longer real. Without noticing it, all mankind suddenly left reality; everything happening since then was supposedly not true; but we supposedly didn't notice. Our task would now be to find that point, and as long as we didn't have it, we would be forced to abide in our present destruction. — Elias Canetti

You end up hating so many people that without even noticing, you start to hate everyone. Including yourself. But that's the trick, you see? The trick that makes everything survivable. You've got to love somebody. — Patrick Ness

I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Letter to a Young Poet, 1903 — Rainer Maria Rilke

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.
There are always more. — David Mitchell

Where'd that world go, that world when you're a kid, and now I can't remember noticing anything, not the smell of the leaves or the sharp curl of dried maple on your ankles, walking? I live in cars now, and my own bedroom, the windows sealed shut, my mouth to my phone, hand slick around its neon jelly case, face closed to the world, heart closed to everything. — Megan Abbott

It was in that room too that I learned not to think about anything that I was writing from the time I stopped writing until I started again the next day. That way my subconscious would be working on it and at the same time I would be listening to other people and noticing everything, I hoped; learning, I hoped; and I would read so that I would not think about my work and make myself impotent to do it. Going down the stairs when you had worked well, and that needed luck as well as discipline, was a wonderful feeling and I was free then to walk anywhere in Paris. — Ernest Hemingway,

But most of all I feel my brain, up there taking in blood and looking out on the world and noticing humor and light and smells and dogs and every other thing in the world - everything in my life is all in my brain, really, so it would be natural that when my brain was screwed up, everything in my life would be. — Ned Vizzini

I started noticing how stained the pavements are in London. The pavements in Beverly Hills aren't used; in London, they're used for everything. It doesn't matter how much they're cleaned, they still reflect light. — Julie Christie

The summer,' Randy explained. 'I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and remember about August. I'm going to dry a big bunch of pennyroyal so I can break pieces off all winter and think of summer. I'm going to look at everything, and smell everything, and listen to everything so I'll never forget
— Elizabeth Enright

Noticing and remembering everything would trap bright scenes to light and fill the blank and darkening past which was already piling up behind me. The growing size of that blank and ever-darkening past frightened me; it loomed beside me like a hole in the air and battened on scraps of my life I failed to claim. If one day I forgot to notice my life, and be damned grateful for it, the blank cave would suck me up entire. — Annie Dillard

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. — Rainer Maria Rilke