#preoccupation

Finally, everybody agrees that no one pursuit can be successfully followed by a man who is preoccupied with many things—eloquence cannot, nor the liberal studies—since the mind, when distracted, takes in nothing very deeply, but rejects everything that is, as it were, crammed into it. There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living: there is nothing that is harder to learn. ↗

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca

#busyness #life #living #mind #preoccupation

War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions. ↗

— Zbigniew Brzezinski

#defines #democracy #does #extremist #first

The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find. ↗

— Freda Adler

#another #controversies #era #find #knowledge

A remarkable feature of the humanitarian movement, on both its sentimental and utilitarian sides, has been its preoccupation with the lot of the masses. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#both #feature #humanitarian #lot #masses

That is my major preoccupation, memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it. ↗

— Elie Wiesel

#glorify #i #kingdom #major #memory

Europe has to address people's needs directly and reflect their priorities, not our own preoccupations. ↗

— Peter Mandelson

#directly #europe #needs #our #own

I wanted to reimagine the role, in a way that was respectful of its traditional responsibilities but made them part of a wider pattern of poetry about national incidents, events, preoccupations; and to spend a great deal of time going to schools trying to demystify poetry. ↗

— Andrew Motion

#deal #events #going #great #great deal

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists... in the loved one, perfection. ↗

— Sidney Poitier

#loved #perfection #preoccupation #suffer

But because we live in an age of science, we have a preoccupation with corroborating our myths. ↗

— Michael Shermer

#because #live #myths #our #preoccupation

There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#interest #memory #operation #preoccupation #rather