Top 100 Preoccupied Quotes
#1. That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.
Oscar Wilde
#2. For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.
Carl Jung
#3. But as I remember it, he looked alternately bored and preoccupied throughout the meal, as if, while one part of him was drinking Bordeaux and cutting his food into bite-sized morsels, the other half was engaged with shepherding a herd of goats across a bone-dry plain.
Nicole Krauss
#4. I'm more preoccupied with furnishing my head than the place where I live. The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones.
Yann Martel
#5. There were a lot of little triggers that made me realize that life is now; life is happening while we're preoccupied with stupidities. Of course, growing. Of course, becoming a mother and understanding life from another perspective.
Thalia
#6. Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.
Michael Crichton
#7. I was there for these moments, but so young and preoccupied with my own thoughts that I hardly recognized them as moments.
Patti Smith
#8. And thus being totally preoccupied, he rode so slowly that the sun was soon glowing with such intense heat that it would have melted his brains, if he'd had any.
Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
#9. One comprehends oneself in order not to be preoccupied with oneself.
Irvin D. Yalom
#10. Keep me preoccupied Keep me busy, busy, busy So I won't have to think I don't want to think Because it only brings me pain I just keep running away from My problems Keep me busy Give me a million things to do So I can keep running away from myself.
Henry Rollins
#11. Garner had to search for his little girl in this endless sea of irrelevancy and indifference and preoccupied people and deteriorating places. This is crazy, this is hopeless ...
John Shirley
#12. If I am preoccupied with the changes my storm has created and concentrating on my scars, I will not be able to recognize Jesus.
Jan Harrison
#13. Henry was wholly preoccupied with the farm. I would have gotten more notice from him if I'd grown a tail and started to bray.
Hillary Jordan
#14. I eat anything, and I'm not preoccupied with my figure. The most important [thing] is that the people accept me for my music, not for physical appearances.
Selena
#15. Maybe it is in the nature of those who are denied sex or do not have enough of it to be so preoccupied with the subject that they view everything else through its distorted lens. "What
Nuruddin Farah
#16. Finally, it is generally agreed that no activity can be successfully pursued by an individual who is preoccupied
Seneca.
#17. History is preoccupied with fundamental processes of change. If you are allergic to these processes, you abandon history and take cover in the social sciences. Today anthropology, sociology, etc, flourish. History is sick. But then our society too is sick
Edward Hallett Carr
#18. In his hours alone, his mind wandered to a million possible outcomes, and he marveled at how long it had been since he had felt so preoccupied by a woman. It was because she was that rare thing, genuinely unobtainable. He should have given up days ago.
Jojo Moyes
#19. The U.S. government has been preoccupied with health care 'reform,' but this refers to improving access and insurance coverage and has little or nothing to do with innovation.
Eric Topol
#20. When man does not have firm, calm lines on the horizon of his life- mountain and forest lines, as it were- then a man's innermost will becomes agitated, preoccupied, and wistful.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#21. If you do not intend to kill anybody, if you make every effort to not kill and injure anybody, that's all you really can do. You can't stop somebody from walking into a situation, and we really can't be too overly preoccupied with this.
Paul Watson
#22. I am quite wiling to confide entirely in human being, except that at some moment or another human beings get preoccupied, moody, busy, inattentive, and there come an end to the interest, and this never happens in a journal!
Anais Nin
#23. Other times escape our notice, slipping by while we are preoccupied, and we do not appreciate their enormity until it's too late to do anything but regret that we had not paid more attention in the present.
Kevin Hearne
#24. I'm definitely preoccupied by thinking I'm just a biological thing. I want to feel that there's more, but so often I'm reminded of how we're just like baboons, basically.
Yannis Philippakis
#25. George W. Bush is not preoccupied with his legacy - nor with his popularity. He never has been. He has always led based on core conviction and strong principles and has believed that time and distance would allow for context.
Mark McKinnon
#26. In my own pursuit of God, I often became preoccupied with ME! It was easy to think that being constantly aware of my faults and weakness was humility. It's not! If I'm the main subject, talking incessantly about my weaknesses, I have entered into the most subtle form of pride.
Bill Johnson
#27. Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can't bother about where they're going.
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
#28. We are not competing for the good when we only compete for numbers, being preoccupied with how many converts we are gaining. The true competition for good only happens when we are implementing our values of justice.
Tariq Ramadan
#29. Whoever that came up with the idea of people having to have 'a dream' sure knew how to keep these creatures called human beings preoccupied.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#30. Yes, I've been very preoccupied with the survivor all through my work.
Robert Jay Lifton
#31. I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.
Douglas Coupland
#32. Man is preoccupied with freedom yet laden with handicaps. The breadth of his activity and experience is narrowed by the limitations of his relatively weak, sluggish body. The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself.
Laura Hillenbrand
#33. The only reason it has been inaccessible is that you are either busy or preoccupied with what is happening outside or far too engaged in your own psychological drama. It is just a lack of attention which has denied people the possibility of discovering what lies within. Turning
Sadhguru
#34. I hate the lackadaisical ennui of a sun too preoccupied with itself to notice the infinite hours we spend in its presence.
Tahereh Mafi
#35. Man is evolving ... but it's difficult to see his progress with a Western perception of time. The Hindus think of time in much larger segments. They watch the hour hand of the clock while we in the West are preoccupied with the second hand.
David Lynch
#36. Today our youth is preoccupied with being rich and famous but is truly missing something. Sadly ... even money won't last if you're not educated. Knowledge Is Everything!
Timothy Pina
#37. Human civilization has always been preoccupied with erecting walls.
Marcello Di Cintio
#38. I gather together the dreams, fantasies, experiences that preoccupied me as a girl, that stay with me and appear and reappear in different shapes and forms in all my work. Without telling everything that happened, they document all that remains most vivid.
Bell Hooks
#39. Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won't see the tree.
Preoccupied with a single tree, you'll miss the entire forest.
Takuan Soho
#40. There are some people whose opinion I value and respect and it would be very bothersome if I forfeited their respect. But the general public? I'm not preoccupied with the opinions of others.
Conrad Black
#41. It used to be just CIA agents with ear-pieces who walked round with preoccupied, faraway expressions, and consequently regarded all the little people as irrelevant scum. Now, understandably, it's nearly everybody.
Lynne Truss
#42. How difficult it is for those of us preoccupied with the humdrum concerns of adulthood to recall how forcefully we were once buffeted by the passions and longings of youth ... 'The older person does not realize the soul-flights of the adolescent ... ' (pg. 185)
Jon Krakauer
#43. What an odd thing it is to see an entire species
billions of people
playing with, listening to meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call 'music.' (
The Overlords, from Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End)
Oliver Sacks
#44. Species are being wiped out every day. Do we want to live with this or don't we? That is really our choice. And I think that human beings, by nature, want to preserve themselves. But right now, we're so preoccupied by other stuff, and we're not addressing the issues, which are our priorities.
Horst Rechelbacher
#45. yes, he had been preoccupied, but hadn't that been what I was looking for--someone who wouldn't pay too much attention, someone who wouldn't look at me to closely?
Carol Goodman
#46. The southern colonists were not preoccupied with their own historical significance and mostly did not bother even to make the records of births, marriages, and deaths that they required of themselves by law. Nor did they write accounts of what they were up to for the benefit of posterity.
Edmund Morgan
#47. Words - I wonder if you can realize how much I love them. You are too much preoccupied with mere things and ideas and people to understand the full beauty of words. Your mind is not a literary mind.
Aldous Huxley
#48. Disciples who are steadfast and immovable do not become fanatics or extremists, are not overzealous, and are not preoccupied with misguided gospel hobbies.
David A. Bednar
#49. So-called 'realist' photography does not capture the 'what is.' Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example.
Jean Baudrillard
#50. Just the fact that I've lived more, and I'm not concerned about when I am going to get my next job anymore. This business is free-lance and it's not a steady job. Younger, I would have been more preoccupied with myself.
Raul Julia
#51. I started doing a Twitter feed when my father was dying. I was very distracted, preoccupied. It was upsetting.
Bruce Eric Kaplan
#52. Held at bay by the hate of others, preoccupied with his own feelings, he was continuously at war with reality.
Richard Wright
#53. When your mind is preoccupied, your impulses - not your long-term goals - will guide your choices.
Kelly McGonigal
#54. The preoccupied become aware of it only when it is over.
Seneca.
#55. The so-called sensitivity of neurotics develops along with their egotism; they cannot bear for other people to flaunt the sufferings with which they are increasingly preoccupied themselves.
Marcel Proust
#56. Everywhere I go, everyone I talk with, everyone I think about - their salvation is what is on my mind. I love fellowship with Christians, but I can't become preoccupied with the pleasure of fellowship when I know that sinners are sinking into hell.
Kirk Cameron
#57. Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other, and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised or become preoccupied at each other's failures - rather, see and find in each other the good, for each one of us is created in the image of God.
Mother Teresa
#58. There is probably no heterosexual alive who is not preoccupied with his latent homosexuality.
Norman Mailer
#59. we go through our social lives convinced that everything we are saying, doing and feeling is being closely examined by those around us even though, in reality, they are all preoccupied with themselves, equally convinced the spotlight is on them.
Will Storr
#60. among a people hurried and busy and preoccupied, some in the pursuit of riches, some in the pursuit of pleasure, and some, the majority, in the struggle for existence, there arise in every generation, here and there, one or two great souls - men who
Oliver Lodge
#61. A soul preoccupied with great ideas best performs small duties.
Harriet Martineau
#62. I think that for the actors, the last thing that they want is a director that's not watching, a director that goes 'Okay, it sounded good to me,' and they were doing something else or preoccupied with something else because they were worried about the light changing.
Gus Van Sant
#63. As long as we're preoccupied with our former traumas and triumphs, or our fears and dreams about what might happen down the road, or who said what to whom, it's very difficult to appreciate and cherish the intrinsically joyful gift of life right here and now.
Lama Surya Das
#64. Thinking about the weaknesses or faults of others is forbidden, whether they are present or not. The Prophet said, There is a tree in Paradise reserved for one whose own faults preoccupied him from considering the faults of others.
Hamza Yusuf
#65. The concern was about getting the beginning right, and then life and eternity would take care of themselves. We have been preoccupied with getting the end right, for some reason.
Richard Rohr
#66. Be so preoccupied with good will that you haven't room for ill will.
E. Stanley Jones
#67. We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.
Jesse Jackson
#68. The crime of capitalism is that it forces the vast majority of the population to remain preoccupied with basic concerns of nutrition, housing, health, and skill acquisition. It leaves little time for fostering the community and creativity that humans crave
Nivedita Majumdar
#69. For most of us, the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it. We will just skim our lives instead of actually living them.
John Ortberg
#70. Fill you mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart.
Marianne Williamson
#71. When I was a child I had a nightmare, and in the morning, I asked my mother and father, 'If I kill someone, would you still love me?' My parents were very preoccupied with this, but I think I'm not the only one to ask for that - not love, but absolute fidelity.
Claire Denis
#72. We can learn only in the expectation of life. Europe is too preoccupied with its destruction to concern itself with such things. A condemned man is interested only in himself, the passage of hours and such intimations of immortality as he can conjure from the recesses of his mind.
Eric Ambler
#73. In proportion as man approaches the outer rim, he becomes lost in details, and the more he is preoccupied with details, the less he can understand them.
Richard M. Weaver
#74. I do not want to write beyond this point, because those days when I studied relentlessly are nostalgic to me; and on the other hand, I am sad when I think how I have become increasingly preoccupied with matters other than study.
Hideki Yukawa
#75. I've always been slightly preoccupied with death or whatever those kind of silly big questions people will tell you to not spend your time worrying about.
Conor Oberst
#76. We have very little, so we have nothing to be preoccupied with. The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are.
Mother Teresa
#77. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."
"Go astray?"
"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.
Rick Riordan
#78. When you make movies, you have to be preoccupied with the social problems, otherwise there is no point in making a movie. To have a story, you need a social problem. Not necessarily a problem, but something to get the idea for a story, otherwise there's no story.
Bruno Dumont
#79. Men as a rule are more preoccupied with the dangers that threaten their life than interested in the biological forces on which they depend for a constructive existence.
Rene Dubos
#80. Don't ever become so preoccupied by who you want to be that you forget to be who you are.
Myles Munroe
#81. When I pray, "Your kingdom come," I am saying to God's Holy Spirit, "Spirit of Christ within me, take control and do what You will for Your glory." A true child of God won't be preoccupied with his own plans and desires but with the determinate program of God, revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
John F. MacArthur Jr.
#83. In my memory of those dark winter nights, my father and I own the whole science building, and we walk about like a duke and his sovereign prince, too preoccupied in our castle to bother about our frozen duchy.
Hope Jahren
#84. Elsewhere, people are too preoccupied by their day-to-day survival to take the time to write their collective history.
Kim Thuy
#85. Jesus did not spend a great deal of time discoursing about the trinity or original sin or the incarnation, which have preoccupied later Christians. He went around doing good and being compassionate.
Karen Armstrong
#86. There is legitimate pleasure, which is not wrong, but we are not to become so preoccupied with its activities that it takes the place of God.
Billy Graham
#87. I know I was an alcoholic because I was preoccupied whether alcohol was going to be served or not.
Betty Ford
#88. Ponder the significance of the responsibility the Lord has given to us. The Lord has counseled, "Let the solemnities of eternity rest upon your minds." (D&C 43:34.) You cannot do that when your minds are preoccupied with the cares of the world.
Ezra Taft Benson
#89. As adults, we are always preoccupied with the baggage we carry and are afraid of our burdens,
Emraan Hashmi
#90. He had to seek out her eyes. They weren't focusing on him. They seemed to be preoccupied, and he wished he could reach up and grab them and train them on here and now. On him.
Alice Sebold
#91. You'll be fooled if you only get your hip-hop from the mainstream, you know. The things that move people are not just found in the mainstream cultures. And when we talk about hip-hop in general, hip-hop's basically preoccupied with life.
Talib Kweli
#92. Wretched are those preoccupied with insulting, belittling and discrediting others.
Wayne Gerard Trotman
#93. The snapshots in CHINA: Portrait of a People are not meant to be works of art. I was too preoccupied with participating, with reveling in the moment, to worry about their perfection. Their purpose, then, is to form a candid portrait of China exactly as China presented itself to me.
Tom Carter
#94. A man is too insignificant to be preoccupied with his failures. All of the energy he has is required for attending to the loneliness, the pain, the needs of others.
Michael Novak
#95. The reason he could do none of the necessary things to take care of himself, on the few occasions when he thought of them, was that he was preoccupied elsewhere.
Peter R. Pouncey
#96. Our spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, expecting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination or prediction. This, indeed, is a very radical stance toward life in a world preoccupied with control.
Henri Nouwen
#97. The Middle Ages were long preoccupied with the nature of the concept, or of the notion which the intellect abstracts from the object; but they never doubted that its content was borrowed from the content of the object, still less that the object really existed.
Etienne Gilson
#98. All comedians are preoccupied with one thing and with one thing only-themmm-selllves. It's a horrible lot in life.
David Letterman
#99. My goal is to make furniture that people can be comfortable living with. If you're not preoccupied with making an impact with your designs, chances are something that looks good today will look good tomorrow.
Sam Maloof
#100. Strong and healthy, who thinks of sickness until it strikes like lightning? Preoccupied with the world, who thinks of death, until it arrives like thunder?
Milarepa
