Naomi Shihab Nye Quotes

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can't hear, and not bothering.

Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

You see more sitting still than chasing after.

When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.

In this world, where everything happens so fast, it's hard to sit back, take the time and contemplate.

Never be afraid to sit a while and think.

Long walks force a certain meditative awareness. You're not moving so fast that you miss the world's details passing by - in fact, you can stop to inspect something that might catch your eye.

When walking, you see things that you miss in a motor car or on the train. You give your mind space to ponder.

If there is time to reflect, slowing down is likely to be a good idea.

I don't really take a step back too often to see what's going on.

Celebration... is self restraint, is attentiveness, is questioning, is meditating, is awaiting, is the step over into the more wakeful glimpse of the wonder - the wonder that a world is worlding around us at all, that there are beings rather than nothing, that things are and we ourselves are in their midst, that we ourselves are and yet barely know who we are, and barely know that we do not know all this.

There was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.

My motto is, 'What's the hurry?' I'm trying to get it across to the modern world that we need to sit around and think a little bit more.

Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink.

What we lack is not so much leisure to do as time to reflect and time to feel. What we seldom "take" is time to experience the things that have happened, the things that are happening, the things that are still ahead of us.

While you are looking, you might as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.

Anytime that I have an impulse to pull out my phone and take a picture, especially of a landscape or something, if the first thing I do is reach for the phone, I actually force myself to sit there and at least wait thirty seconds before I actually grab my phone. I'm, like, "No, sit here for thirty seconds, and just see what you think about. What does this make you think about?"

You must treat the days respectfully, you must be a day yourself, and not interrogate it like a college professor.

Its never too late to take a moment to look.

Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience; to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder upon it, and dwell upon it.

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you’ve learned about the grand themes of life.

Stop and take your time to notice things and make those things you notice matter.

If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.