This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Friends must desire to live as much as possible together and to share their work, thoughts, and pleasures. Good-fellowship and sensuous affinity are indispensable to give spiritual communion a personal accent; otherwise men would be indifferent vehicles for such thoughts and powers as emanated from them, and attention would not be in any way arrested or refracted by the human medium through which it beheld the good.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.
There is no such thing as voluntary attention sustained for more than a few seconds at a time.
Communicate downwards to subordinates with at least the same care and attention as you communicate upward to superiors
If men gave three times as much attention as they now do to ventilation, ablution, and exercise in the open air, and only one third as much to eating, luxury, and late hours, the number of doctors, dentists, and apothecaries, and the amount of neuralgia, dyspepsia, gout, fever, and consumption would be changed in corresponding ratio.
The fact that the eye constantly thrusts outwards distracts us from self-knowledge and the way inwards. It dissipates attention... The eye says I. We sense when someone is looking at us. Their gaze insists: Pay attention to me! Almost everyone is also aware of that when the observer is standing behind us. We notice after a while. Someone is there. Who is it? Who would not, however, know if someone were listening to us if he or she did not say so. The listener does not put the emphasis on himself or event the other person. He does not insist on a separation between subject and object. The ear establishes a 'more correct' relationship between ourselves and others. It implies unity rather than division. Eye and ear need one another. Ear and eye are not alternatives.
Attention | Knowledge | Listening | Need | Object | Relationship | Self | Self-knowledge | Sense | Unity |
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
An observant man, in all his intercourse with society and the world, constantly and unperceived marks on every person and thing the figure expressive of its value, and therefore, on meeting that person or thing, knows instantly what kind and degree of attention to give it. This is to make something of experience.
Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes some places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.
Attention | Faith | Fear | Man | Nations | Pleasure | Praise | Present | Rest | Sacrifice | Spirit | Superstition |
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of man, and fix our attention on his affirmaties.
Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.
Acquire good physique and mental robustness which comes from fresh air, sound and plain food, constant and compelling attention to waste matter, proper and peaceful sleep, and concentration on true religion, ethics, art and literature.
Art | Attention | Ethics | Good | Literature | Religion | Sound | Waste | Art |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
A positive emotional state entrains, or unites, our systems for thought, feeling, and action; shifts our concentration and energy toward support of our intellectual and creative forebrain (old mammalian and neocortex); and allows us to both learn and remember easily. In very young children, the primary caregiver’s emotional state determines the child’s state, and therefore the child’s development in general. Any kind of negative response, any form of fear or anger shifts our attention and energy from verbal-intellectual brain to our oldest survival brain. This shift shortchanges our intellect, cripples our learning and memory, and can lock our neocortex into service of our lower brain.
Action | Anger | Attention | Children | Energy | Fear | Learning | Memory | Service | Survival | Thought | Learn |
What the world needs is not romantic lovers who are sufficient unto themselves, but husbands and wives who live in communities, relate to other people, carry on useful work and willingly give time and attention to their children.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
In our culture we make heroes of the men who sit on top of a heap of money, and we pay attention not only to what they say in their field of competence, but to their wisdom on every other question in the world.
Attention | Competence | Culture | Men | Money | Question | Wisdom | World |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Every product of technology takes up space in the mind, and requires some investment of attention that could have been used for some other purpose.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
When attention is not focused on a goal, the mind typically begins to be filled by disjointed and depressing thoughts. The normal condition of the mind is chaos. Only when involved in a goal-directed activity does it acquire order and positive moods... Boredom directs us to seek new challenges, while anxiety urges us to develop new skills; the net result is that, in order to avoid such negative feelings, a person is forded to grow in complexity.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The merging of action and awareness is made possible by centering attention on a limited stimulus field. To insure that people will concentrate on their actions, potentially intruding stimuli must be kept out of attention. Some writers [such as Abraham Maslow] have called this process a "narrowing of consciousness" or "a giving up of the past and the future."
Action | Attention | Awareness | Consciousness | Future | Giving | Past | People | Will | Awareness |