Henry David Thoreau Quotes

We have seen from experience that, if we are in the habit of walking regularly on the same road, we are able to think about other things while walking, without paying attention to our steps.

I have no organisational skills. All my energy goes into worry - worrying takes a lot of energy.

The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.

My attention span is very short.

I'm not good at concentrating.

I can't do one thing at a time. If I'm writing song lyrics, I've got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I'm working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.

The mind of the greatest man on earth is not so independent of circumstances as not to feel inconvenienced by the merest buzzing noise about him; it does not need the report of a cannon to disturb his thoughts. The creaking of a vane or a pully is quite enough. Do not wonder that he reasons ill just now; a fly is buzzing by his ear; it is quite enough to unfit him for giving good counsel.

The old cliché in theater is, if you’re nervous, pick up a prop, which will immediately take you outside of your mind.

The eyes see not what is before them when the mind is intent on other matters.

I don't concentrate on if a moment is scary or not. That's not my job.

You cannot give your full attention to something, and at the same time resist it.

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.

It got so that when he closed his eyes, letters and words danced in his mind. He thought of little else during that time.

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

You cannot do good work if you take your mind off the work to see how the community is taking it.

Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit.... What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man's mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that, in the morning, it will be in a body that is going to be hanged.

The only reason men fail is because of broken focus

One great cause of failure is lack of concentration.

I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

But when we start to focus in on what our own mind is up to, for instance, it is not unusual to quickly go unconscious again, to fall back into an automatic-pilot mode of unawareness. These lapses in awareness are frequently caused by an eddy of dissatisfaction with what we are seeing or feeling in that moment, out of which springs a desire for something to be different, for things to change.

I love to dream, but I never try to dream and think at the same time.

Dreaming about a thing in order to do it properly is right; but dreaming about it when we should be doing it is wrong.