A commonplace book — passages kept because they earned it.
The oldest of these are a hundred years old and were already worried. Whatever is taking our attention now, the losing of it is not a new complaint.
My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind.
William James, The Principles of Psychology, 1890
"Agree to" is the word I keep coming back to. It makes attention a thing you consent to, not a thing that happens.
The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.
William James, The Principles of Psychology
He then admits it is easier to define this ideal than to give directions for bringing it about. Honest man.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Samuel Johnson, The Idler
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, all in one.
Ruskin, Modern Painters, III
Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, V
A dyer's warning about what you let yourself read all day. Filed here on purpose.
We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge.
Thoreau, Journal, 1840
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second.
Emerson, Circles