awareness Quotes

“Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today.”

“One could add that totalitarian regimes seem to have an intuitive awareness that it becomes hard for people to change after a certain age, which is why so much effort is made to indoctrinate the young from an early age.”

“Awareness of our situation must come before inner changes, which in turn come before changes in society. Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.”

“Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life-learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even little seed in the Styrofoam up-they all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned-the biggest word of all-LOOK.”

“For some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were. You’ll detect slow and subtle shifts going on all around you, more importantly shifts in you. Worse, you’ll realize it’s always been shifting, like a shimmer of sorts, a vast shimmer, only dark like a room. But you won’t understand why or how. You’ll have forgotten what granted you this awareness in the first place

“We are old now, yet we were young this morning, when we carried our glass box through the streets of the City to the Home of the Scholars.”

“To allow ourselves to be truly in touch with where we already are, no matter where that is, we have got to pause in our experience long enough to let the present moment sink in; long enough to actually feel the present moment, to see it in its fullness, to hold it in awareness and thereby come to know and understand it better.”

“It is my mind which thinks, and the judgment of my mind is the only searchlight that can find the truth.”

“There is fear hanging in the air of the sleeping halls, and in the air of the streets. Fear walks through the City, fear without name, without shape. All men feel it and none dare to speak.”

“Mindfulness practice means that we commit fully in each moment to be present; inviting ourselves to interface with this moment in full awareness, with the intention to embody as best we can an orientation of calmness, mindfulness, and equanimity right here and right now.”

“And we heard suddenly that we were laughing, laughing aloud, laughing as if there were no power left in us save laughter.”

“Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness.”

“I wished to know the meaning of things. I am the meaning.”

“[My father] taught me with silence. . .to look into myself, to find my own strength, to walk around inside myself in company with my soul. . . . One learns of the pain of others by suffering one’s own pain … by turning inside oneself. . . . It makes us aware of how frail and tiny we are and of how much we must depend upon the Master of the Universe.”

“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”

“Well, it may have escaped your notice, but life isn’t fair.”

“There’s the poor little mouse eating her nightly supper in the humble corner where I’ve put out a little delight-plate full of cheese and chocolate candy (for my days of killing mice are over).”

“We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.”

“Our identities are always changing and growing, they’re not meant to be pinned down. Our histories are never all good or all bad, and running from the past is the surest way to be defined by it. That’s when it owns us. The key is bringing light to the darkness - developing awareness and understanding.”

“But, nevertheless, if there is even the slightest recognition, liberation is easy. Should you ask why this is so—it is because once the awesome, terrifying and fearful appearances arise, the awareness does not have the luxury of distraction. The awareness is one-pointedly concentrated.”

“There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. it should be open to the spirit not to lock itself up in the letter. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death.”

“We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”

“Stuff your eyes with wonder...live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic that any dream made or paid for in factories.”

″‘Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning.’ He suddenly couldn’t remember if he had known this or not, and it made him quite irritable. ‘And if you look’ — she nodded at the sky — ‘there’s a man on the moon.’ He hadn’t looked for a long time.”

“Then suddenly the Mole felt a great awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror – indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy.”

“A Warrior never picks fruit while it is still green.”

“Be certain that the nature of mind is empty and without foundation. One’s own mind is insubstantial, like an empty sky. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. Divorced from views which constructedly determine [the nature of] emptiness, be certain that pristine cognition, naturally originating, is primordially radiant- just like the nucleus of the sun, which is itself naturally originating. Look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not!”

“The nature of the mind, which is all-knowing, aware of everything, empty and radiant, is established to be the manifestly radiant and self-originating pristine cognition, present from the beginning, just like the sky...”

“Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself.

″‘My dear child,’ said the king, “you must be aware by this time that you are not exactly like other people.‘”

“It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together.”

“I think we are innately suspicious of this kind of rapid cognition. We live in a world that assumes that the quality of a decision is directly related to the time and effort that went into making it.”

“Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.”

“Gottman, it turns out, can teach us a great deal about the critical part of rapid cognition known as thin-slicing. Thin slicing refers to the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and behavior based on very narrow slices of experience.”

“Blue was perfectly aware that it was possible to have a friendship that wasn’t all-encompassing, that wasn’t blinding, deafening, maddening, quickening. It was just that now that she’d had this kind, she didn’t want the other.”

“A moment more and I had fettered him to the granite.”

“…there was already something in his gaze beyond the capacity of any ape. In those dark, deep-set eyes was a dawning awareness—the first intimations of an intelligence that could not possibly fulfill itself for ages yet, and might soon be extinguished forever.”

″(Christophine) had a quiet voice and a quiet laugh (when she did laugh), and though she could speak good English if she wanted to, and French as well as patois, she took care to talk as they talked.”

“Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”

“Your child will be more aware of the problems and the pain in the world. But perhaps the best definition of happiness came from Aristotle: We are happiest when doing what, by nature, we were born to do best.”

“Sutra 1.27: tasya vâcakah prañavah” Translation: Isvara is the Sanskrit word for pure awareness, and is represented by the sound of OM, the universal vibration that connects us all.

“Stepping always on the edge of danger. Always aware, but not drawing back or turning aside.”

Sutra 2.32: sauca-santosa-tapah-svâdhyâyesvara-prañidhânâni niyamâh Translation: Cleanliness and purity of body and mind, an attitude of contentment, discipline, self-study and reflection on sacred words, and an attitude of surrender are the observances or practices of self-training, and are the second rung on the ladder of yoga, otherwise known as the Niyamas.

“Remembering home he suddenly became inward and didn’t want to say any more about all that. He dabbed flakes of croissant on to a finger-end and licked them away.”

“What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature—not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant.”

“He had suddenly had a strange feeling stronger than any he had ever known: he had been aware that someone was trying to tell him something, something that had missed him because he could not understand the words. Not words exactly; it had been like a kind of silent shout. But he had not been able to pick up the message, because he had not known how. ”

“But also, I watch. I see everything and it gives me a strange kind of power, even if I’m the only one who’s aware of it.”

“There are two distinct aspects of your inner being. The first is you, the awareness, the witness, the center of your willful intentions; and the other is that which you watch.”

“There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness. Consciousness is pure awareness.”

“If no one is aware of the objects, their existence or nonexistence becomes completely irrelevant.”

“I am the one who sees. From back in here somewhere, I look out, and I am aware of the events, thoughts, and emotions that pass before me.”

“The key, though, is being aware of how you’re feeling and how you need to be feeling. It all starts with awareness.”

“To stay calm is to be so aware of yourself that your response to the situation is not to the anxiety of the people around you but to the actual issue at hand.”

“In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

“the degree of awareness represents the difference. Rational people can readily admit their own irrational tendencies and the need to be vigilant. On the other hand, irrational people become highly emotional when challenged about the emotional roots of their decisions. They are incapable of introspection and learning. Their mistakes”

“The second factor is that almost all of us at some point in our lives have experienced moments of greater rationality. This often comes with what we shall call the maker’s mind-set. We have a project to get done, perhaps with a deadline. The only emotion we can afford is excitement and energy. Other emotions simply make it impossible to concentrate. Because we have to get results, we become exceptionally practical. We focus on the work—our mind calm, our ego not intruding. If people try to interrupt or infect us with emotions, we resent it. These moments—as fleeting as a few weeks or hours—reveal the rational self that is waiting to come out. It just requires some awareness and some practice.”

“Somehow she sensed that what she had been caught doing was of a magnitude beyond usual punishment. And, deeper than that, she was aware of the complicity of the orphanage that had fed her and all the others on pills that would make them less restless, easier to deal with.”