Selected focus quotes

1. A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.

2. If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

3. There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.

4. I can't play bridge. I don't play tennis. All those things that people learn, and I admire, there hasn't seemed time for. But what there is time for is looking out the window.

5. Always try the problem that matters most to you.

6. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

7. Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

8. Any man who concentrates his energies totally on one passion is, by definition, someone who hurts the people close to him.

9. I could do great things, if I weren't so busy doing little things.

10. Just when I nearly had the answer, I forgot the question.

11. Nothing really matters except a few things that really don't matter very much.

12. I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing.

13. I believe in the ability of focusing strongly in something, then you are able to extract even more out of it. It's been like this all my life, and it's been only a question of improving it, and learning more and more and there is almost no end. As you go through you just keep finding more and more. It's very interesting, it's fascinating.

14. No collection of people who are all waiting for the same thing are capable of holding a natural conversation. Even if the thing they are waiting for is only a taxi.

15. I really love the dark of the night. It helps me to concentrate.

16. I hope martial artists are more interested in the root of martial arts and not the different decorative branches, flowers or leaves.

17. It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

18. One of the points about distractions is that everything that they do is destabilizing.

19. It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails when you're trying to make a plan work.

20. Any artist will tell you he's really only interested in the stuff he's doing now. He will, always. It's true, and it should be like that.

21. Sometimes when you look in his eyes you get the feeling that someone else is driving.

22. The psychological profiling [of a programmer] is mostly the ability to shift levels of abstraction, from low level to high level. To see something in the small and to see something in the large.

23. Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things. What I do takes long hours of studying and uninterruptible concentration.

24. To really be centered and to really work well and to think about the kinds of things that I need to think about, I need to spend large amounts of time alone.

25. When I'm writing, I am concentrating almost wholly on concrete detail: the color a room is painted, the way a drop of water rolls off a wet leaf after a rain.

26. Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

27. Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

28. My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.

29. A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.

30. We have perhaps a natural fear of ends. We would rather be always on the way than arrive. Given the means, we hang on to them and often forget the ends.

31. Mortal danger is an effective antidote for fixed ideas.

32. All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.

33. There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

34. Evil is whatever distracts.

35. There is nothing that sharpens a man's senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day.

36. The thing that's important for me is to remember what's the most important thing.

37. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.

38. I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.

39. The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.

40. The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.

41. A pen is certainly an excellent instrument to fix a man's attention and to inflame his ambition.

42. If your only goal is to become rich, you will never achieve it.

43. Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim.

44. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.

45. For the great mass of mankind the only saving grace that is needed is steady fidelity to what is nearest to hand and heart in the short moment of each human effort.

46. The direction of the mind is more important than its progress.

47. Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

48. I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.

49. The way to do fieldwork is never to come up for air until it is all over.

50. Music, not sex, got me aroused.

51. Winner knows nothing about food.

52. Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters.

53. I know for sure that what we dwell on is who we become.

54. My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in.

55. The lamp burns bright when wick and oil are clean.

56. In deep meditation the flow of concentration is continuous like the flow of oil.

57. Men experience many passions in a lifetime. One passion drives away the one before it.

58. Don't look over your shoulder and don't use or abuse others to get ahead. Keep your eyes focused on your goals and keep working for what you believe in and what you want to accomplish.

59. Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don't move.

60. There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

61. The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.

62. When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

63. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

64. People talk about talent as though it were some neutral substance that can be applied to anything. But talent is narrow and only functions with a very few subjects, which it is up to the writer to find.

65. To note an artist's limitations is but to define his talent. A reporter can write equally well about everything that is presented to his view, but a creative writer can do his best only with what lies within the range and character of his deepest sympathies.

66. The artist doesn't have time to listen to the critics. The ones who want to be writers read the reviews, the ones who want to write don't have the time to read reviews.

67. The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

68. It were endless to dispute upon everything that is disputable.

69. Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, Nor thought of tender happiness betray.

70. I don't dwell in the past; I don't wallow in old events and emotions. I don't waste time on regret. No use going over and over the details of what already happened.

71. I can't concentrate when I'm thinking.

72. It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless.

73. 'The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.'

74. He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe's edge did try.

75. It's not what's happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it's your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you're going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny.

76. Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

77. One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus; we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular.

78. All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.

79. Your body has to be in top condition. Your chess deteriorates as your body does. You can't separate body from mind.

80. It's just you and your opponent at the board and you're trying to prove something.

81. Concentration is the ROOT of all the higher abilities in man.

82. I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time.

83. I can't go to a restaurant and order food because I keep looking at the fonts on the menu.

84. If Shakespeare had to go on an author tour to promote Romeo and Juliet, he never would have written Macbeth.

85. If your energy is as boundless as your ambition, total commitment may be a way of life you should seriously consider.

86. I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance.

87. Now we have hands-free phones, so you can focus on the thing you're really supposed to be doing ... chances are, if you need both of your hands to do something, your brain should be in on it too.

88. 'Think simple' as my old master used to say. Meaning, reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.

89. When mundane, lowly activities are at stake, too much insight is detrimental-far-sightedness errs in immediate concerns.

90. Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine.

91. Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

92. The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things.

93. It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

94. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: 'The golden rule is that there is no golden rule.' We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters - except everything.

95. When everything about a people is for the time growing weak and ineffective, it begins to talk about efficiency. So it is that when a man's body is a wreck he begins, for the first time, to talk about health. Vigorous organisms talk not about their processes, but about their aims.

96. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

97. 'No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed. No stream or gas drives anything until it is confined. No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled. No life ever grows great until it is focused, dedicated, disciplined.'

98. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.

99. Cease the bickering! I am indulging the exotic whims of a beautiful princess and must not be distracted.

100. I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.