Quotes & Sayings About Single Mindedness

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. — Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don't like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which irritates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck. — Roger Zelazny

Grit is not synonymous with hard work. It involves a certain single-mindedness. An ungritty prison inmate will mount a daring new escape attempt every month, but a gritty prison inmate will tunnel his way out one spoonful of concrete at a time. Grit — Chip Heath

I had the good fortune to begin my legal career as a law clerk for a judge who really epitomized open-mindedness and fairness. He read the record in detail in every single case that came before me; he insisted on scrupulously following precedents. — Samuel Alito

Now that I'm losing some, I can see how tough I was
the killer instinct, the single-mindedness, playing like a machine. Boy, that's what made me a champion. — Chris Evert

Single-mindedness. I hate to say it because I don't think it's the best thing for developing a person, but the single-mindedness - just concentrating in the one area - that's what it takes to be a champion. — Chris Evert

To practice the Way single heartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment and daily life. This stripped-down Buddhist aesthetic pervades all aspects of St Zen. Most St Zen temples eschew the fantastic sculptures of bodhisattvas with their jewelry and fluttering robes. Instead, Zen emphasizes rock gardens, green-tea caffeine-infused meditation, and single-mindedness. — Marie Mutsuki Mockett

The perception of other people and the intersubjective world is problematic only for adults. The child lives in a world which he unhesitatingly believes accessible to all around him. He has no awares of himself or of others as private subjectives, nor does he suspect that all of us, himself included, are limited to one certain point of view of the world. That is why he subjects neither his thoughts, in which he believes as they present themselves, to any sort of criticism. He has no knowledge of points of view. For him men are empty heads turned towards one single, self-evident world where everything takes place, even dreams, which are, he thinks, in his room, and even thinking, since it is not distinct from words. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

The senator...was a smart man who had made his way in life with a single-mindedness oblivious to any of those stumbling blocks known as conscience, sworn oaths, justice, duty... — Victor Hugo

I know a lot of people with obsessive qualities, and there's a positive and negative part to it. There's the appeal of someone who's so deadly focused on something that they want or desire - there's a dedication and a single-mindedness that's great. But then if it goes on too long it becomes a psychosis. What's the French term for it? Idee fixe. — Callum Keith Rennie

Clare knew that she loved him - every curve of her form showed that - but he did not know at that time the full depth of her devotion, its single-mindedness, its meekness; what long-suffering it guaranteed, what honesty, what endurance, what good faith. — Thomas Hardy

...they took him, in his frenzy of love, for a mad dog that had broken loose-- and he really looked terrifying: so emaciated that his ribs showed, a yellow film over his eyes, panting hoarsely and with his loose collar clinking as he ran headlong with frightening single-mindedness toward his unknown goal. — Georgi Vladimov

we refer to the Middle Ages as ages of faith; a time in which men believed a heavenly Jerusalem above the sky much as they believed an earthly Sion beyond the sea; when the whole of their thought was of a piece with their theology...those were days when a thoughtful soul here or there could realize some unity of mental vision. The fact should be admitted, however we regard it - whether as the stultifying tyranny of dogma or as an enviable single-mindedness; an ideal too easily realized, no doubt, in a plentiful dearth of empirical knowledge, and yet establishing a standard after which perplexed modernity may strive. — Jocelyn Gibb

The one who cannot see your vision will be blinded by your mission. — Habeeb Akande

There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered. — Simon Blackburn

The only thing more dangerous then a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom window open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency ... — Terry Pratchett

Happiness is the sense that one matters. Happiness is an abiding enthusiasm. Happiness is single-mindedness. Happiness is whole-heartedness. Happiness is a by-product. Happiness is faith. — Sam Shoemaker

I always wanted to be a filmmaker and became one through sheer single-mindedness. I came to filmmaking from a background in graphic design. I went to film school at Newcastle Polytechnic. — Neil Marshall

The media - and I'm not blaming them - obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government. — Tony Abbott

The one thing that I want every single child to have experienced at some point in their life, as part of their education, is to have some idea they hold to be true, and at the very basis of their being, proved to be wrong.
Because that opens your mind to the realization that the world is different than you thought it would be, and you have to begin to open your mind to the possibilities of existence.
And opening your mind frees you, it doesn't constrain you. It makes the world more wonderful, more exciting, and more worth living in. — Lawrence M. Krauss

We have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever we did, we did at the time in the best of faith. Of course, we took some bold steps and often did things with much single-mindedness; but this is surely preferable to never putting one's convictions to the test, for lack of will or courage. — Kazuo Ishiguro

It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which Hitler has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. — Mahatma Gandhi

I'd always been leery of Eric, but I'd appreciated his mischief, his single-mindedness, and his flair. If you could a vampire had jois de vivre, Eric had it in spades.
-Sookie — Charlaine Harris

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful. — Aldous Huxley

Of the two classes of Prussian officer, the bull-necked and the wasp-waisted, he belonged to the second. Monocled and effete in appearance, cold and distant in manner, he concentrated with such single-mindedness on his profession that when an aide, at the end of an all-night staff ride in East Prussia, pointed out to him the beauty of the river Pregel sparkling in the rising sun, the General gave a brief, hard look and replied, 'An unimportant obstacle. — Barbara W. Tuchman

And in that moment, I felt my own ignorance spread suddenly out behind me like a pair of wings, and every single thing I didn't know was a feather on those wings. I could feel them tugging at the air, restless to be airborne. — Frank Cottrell Boyce

It never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people- with the single mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Spirituality can go hand-in-hand with ruthless single-mindedness when the individual is convinced his cause is just — Michela Wrong

It is impossible to describe a landscape so validly as to exclude all other descriptions, for no one can see the landscape in all its aspects at the same time, and no single view can prevent the existence and validity of other equally possible views. — Frithjof Schuon

This was genius at close quarters, and genius had that something above normal in it that was a great strain upon the ordinary mind and feeling. All five were different from each other, yet each had that curious quality of burning intensity, the single-mindedness of purpose that made such a terrifying impression. She did not know whether it were a quality of brain or rather a quality of outlook, of intensity. But each of them, she thought, was in his or her way a passionate idealist. — Agatha Christie

My mom has always said that the one thing she wishes she had done differently is have a job. She felt like the single-mindedness made her a little nuts sometimes, and she could have used an outlet for herself when we were little. — Jennifer Garner

I'm trying to figure the rules. This isn't yin and yang, it's more like yin and yank. The past few days I've been going, OK, she doesn't mix the ... romance so well with the single-mindedness of the police work. So it gets me wondering, Is the solution for me to give up our working relationship? Stop my magazine research so we can-?"
Nikki grabbed him into a deep kiss. Then she pulled away and said, "Will you shut up? — Richard Castle

Rainer Maria Rilke sacrificed everything
For his art he dedicated himself
To the Great Work

I admired his single-mindedness
All through my twenties
I argued his case

Now I think he was a jerk
For skipping his daughter's wedding
For fear of losing his focus

He believed in the ancient enmity
Between daily life and the highest work
Or Ruth and the Duino Elegies

It is probably a middle-class prejudice
Of mine to think that Anna Akhmatova
Should have raised her son Lev

Instead of dumping him on her husband's mom
Motherhood is a bright torture she confessed
I was not worthy of it

Lev never considered it sufficient
For her to stand outside his prison
Month after month clutching packages

And composing Requiem for the masses — Edward Hirsch

To get where we want to go in life, we have to keep at it. We have to create a vision, make choices based on what moves us most swiftly toward our goals, and go after them with determination and single-mindedness. — Stedman Graham

The Road is not a record of fatherly fidelity; it is a testament to the abyss of a parent's greatest fears. The fear of leaving your child alone, of dying before your child has reached adulthood and learned to work the mechanisms and face the dangers of the world, or found a new partner to face them with. The fear of one day being obliged for your child's own good, for his peace and comfort, to do violence to him or even end his life. And, above all, the fear of knowing - as every parent fears - that you have left your children a world more damaged, more poisoned, more base and violent and cheerless and toxic, more doomed, than the one you inherited. It is in the audacity and single-mindedness with which The Road extends the metaphor of a father's guilt and heartbreak over abandoning his son to shift for himself in a ruined, friendless world that The Road finds its great power to move and horrify the reader. — Michael Chabon

As he was wont to remark, Nature has had her day; she has finally exhausted through the nauseating uniformity of her landscapes and her skies, the sedulous patience of men of refined taste. Essentially, what triteness Nature displays, like a specialist who confines himself to his own single sphere; what small-mindedness, like a shopkeeper who stocks only this one article to the exclusion of any other; what monotony she exhibits with her arrangements of mountains and seas! Page 20.
There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artifice. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

An objective viewpoint was beyond her; she was single-minded to a fault. — Alison Weir

Martin Buber as described for basic virtues cultivated by the Hasidim to overcome the separation of the sacred and secular. . . . St. Benedict spoke of them as truly seeking God, zeal for a humble way of life, zeal for obedience, and zeal for the opus of God. Buber catalogues them as kavana (single-mindedness), shiflut (humility), avada (service), and hitlahavut (fire of ecstasy). 129 — M. Basil Pennington

Salute to the Thief. Junaid of Baghdad was passing the scene of a public hanging, where a thief was on the scaffold. Junaid bowed towards the criminal. Someone asked him: 'What did you do that?' Junaid said: 'I was bowing before his single-mindedness. For his aim, that man has given his life. — Idries Shah

You have to have a certain single-mindedness if you want to reach the top of the profession, and I'm not sure if I've got that cold-eyed egomania that perhaps is needed to get to the top. So as long as I can keep paying the mortgage and keep myself interested, I'll be happy. — David Harewood

Great teams are usually small-under fifty in total head count. (There are few examples of a team made up of hundreds of people who created anything revolutionary.) Big teams aren't conducive to revolutionary products because such products require a high degree of single-mindedness, unity, and unreasonable passion. — Guy Kawasaki

To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor painless. It demands a single-mindedness that is almost unknown in this day. — Neil Gaiman