Absent-mindedness

“ A speaker during his discourse will straighten his tie, make various gestures, and toy with any object which happens to be lying on the desk, all without being aware of his movements, until his attention is called to the fact. Absent-minded persons habitually amuse us by frequently performing complete and rather complex series of actions while wholly oblivious to what they are doing. Everyone can recall numerous instances of absent-mindedness in his own experience. ”

“ A poet, for instance, may indulge in long hair, without necessarily being an æsthete or a cowboy; the habit of talking to one’s-self is no proof of a guilty conscience; and absent-mindedness in many forms has accompanied the possession of exceptional capacity. ”

“ For instance, many of the detailed movements of writing and walking are performed without any attention to the details. An excessive concentration of the attention upon one thing leads to absent-mindedness, and to its consequent absurdities of inappropriate, because imperfectly acquired, reflexes. ”

“ It so happens, however, that a large part of our mental activity is occupied with acts of which at the moment we are only dimly aware—or half aware—in that they do not occupy the focus of attention. Some of these are what we call absent-minded acts. ”

“ Strictly avoid anything approaching to absence of mind. There can be nothing more offensive than a pre-occupied vacant expression, an evident abstraction of self at the very time you are supposed to be listening attentively to all that is being said to you. Lord Chesterfield said: "When I see a man absent in mind. I choose to be absent in body." ”

“ It is a breach of etiquette to wear an air of abstraction in society if your mind is really so absorbed that you cannot pay attention to what is going on around you, you had better stay at home. An absent mind is much more frequently a proof of self- conceit than of genius. ”

“ The man whose task has no appeal for him has to fight to keep his mind on it, and there are other people, the so-called absent-minded, who are so over- concentrated, so wedded to a goal in thought, that lesser matters are neither remembered nor noticed. ”

“ Absence of mind is usually affected, and springs in most cases from a desire to be thought abstracted in profound contemplations. The world, however, gives a man no credit for vast ideas who exhibits absence when he should be attentive, even to trifles. ”

“ Consciousness and conscience set free from the exacted instant replies of the unrelapsing day. And at the awakening all is ready yet once more, and apprehension begins again: a perpetual presence of mind.
Dr. Johnson was "absent." No man of "absent" mind is without some hourly deliverance. It is on the present mind that presses the burden of the present world. ”

“ As I write this and look back and know how my people looked on, worried and distressed, thinking it was all imagination, and telling me to forget all these ideas, I think "How little we know of what is passing in another's mind though they are standing beside us, and how helpless we are when we try to voice our troubles and they will not understand." ”

“ He, poor soul, stunned but not convinced, clings desperately to some pettifogging convictions which he calls truth, and refuses a clearer vision. His habit of remembering what he believed yesterday clogs his mind, and makes it hard for him to believe something entirely new to-day. ”

“ Well, at such times we storm and fume and fret, and complain at our inability to solve the problem. We set up ideas only to tear them down again. We assume and then abandon one position after another, until there is nothing left. And the end of all the intellectual debauch is to say finally, "I do not know." And then, after the struggle is over, we see, just as plainly as ever before, the glimpse of Truth that has come to us from within—we hear the words of the soul—we have the same old consciousness. We say to ourselves, "I may not get this thing intellectually, but I KNOW it is true. ”

“ But it would be a mistake to attempt always to bring out directly that alone which appears to be hidden behind the naïve moment. The will does not think, but it must turn the attention of the mind to knowledge. ”

“ Absence of mind is a tacit declaration, that those we are in company with, are not worth attending to; and what can be a greater affront?——Besides, can an absent man improve by what is said or done in his presence? No; he may frequent the best companies for years together, and all to no purpose. In short, a man is neither fit for business nor conversation, unless he can attend to the object before him, be that object what it will. ”

“ But yet as things run on they find
That out of sight is out of mind.
For men, that will not idlers be,
Must lend their hearts to things they see;
And friends who leave them far behind,
When out of sight are out of mind. ”

“ It must be that speech and thought are being, for being is, and that not-being is nothing: which things I bid thee ponder. First, keep thy mind from that path of inquiry, then, too, from that on which mortals who know nothing wander in doubt; helplessness sways in their breasts the erring mind; hither and thither are they borne, deaf, yea, and blind, in wonderment, confused crowds who fancy being and not-being are the same and not the same ”

“ Had I quickened him with a sense of the Beautiful, his Life would have been a Misery—his Death a Crime. For know that Mind alone can sympathize with Mind; and mindless Man enriches those who minister rather to the luxury of his Senses than to the refinement of his Intellect. ”

“ I knew myself the very worst conceivable, but how to give to such other persons a decent or coherent reason for my being so required more presence of mind than I could in the least muster—the consequence of which failure had to be for me, I fear, under all that confused first flush, rather an abject acceptance of the air of imbecility. ”

“ Every word and every movement of this personality become therefore absorbed with that over-attention which leads at once from a mere perceiving and grasping to a complete sinking into the suggested idea with the suppression of all opposites, and thus to a blind acceptance and belief. ”

“ Absence of mind, of course, conversationally slays its thousands, though perhaps more by the way of "Things one would rather have left unsaid" than by "Things one would rather have expressed differently." ”

“ It is all unconscious, this persistence of inherited instincts through the most unfavourable circumstances, with not an impulse in the brain to guide it. And how short it stops, this heredity! It goes so far and no farther; the brain, most important of all, is choked with the weeds of a bitter fate. ”

“ Even if we were not in relation with the external world, and our mind was confined to internal facts alone, to the consciousness of the me and its modifications, we should know that there is transition from not-being to being, by the testimony of the successive appearance of new perceptions and affections. Within ourselves we experience the ebb and flow of modifications which pass from not-being to being, and from being to not-being. ”

“ What shall we say of these timid folk who carry the principle of thinking nothing and doing nothing and being nothing to such an extreme? As if, in the absence of thought, that vast yearning of their natures for something to fill the vacuum made the least traditionary expression and shadow of a thought to be clung to with instinctive tenacity. ”

“ We speak of people being “out of their senses,” when they have in fact fallen back into them; or of those who have “lost their mind,” when they have lost merely that habitual control over consciousness which prevented it from flaring into all sorts of obsessions and agonies. ”

“ I am amazingly absent; I believe I am the most absent creature in the world. ”

“ You, my dear friend, will perfectly understand me that I do not mean that I might not freely say to you anything that is upon my mind—but [the] truth is, my poor mind is so weak that I never dare trust my own judgement in anything: what I think one hour a fit of low spirits makes me unthink the next. ”

“ It bespeaks an unthinking inconsiderate Mind, one that lives at Random, without any design or end; who wanting judgment to discern where to fix, or to know when she’s well, is ever fluctuating and uncertain, undoing to day what she had done yesterday, which is the worst Character that can be given of ones Understanding. ”

“ The intellectual vision becomes less penetrating, the decisions of the mind less reliable, and the grasp of thought less vigorous. The logic grows muddy. A thriftless, reckless feeling is developed. Ere long, self-respect is lost, and then ambition ceases to allure, and the high spirit sinks. ”

“ On reading through their papers they find that all their knowledge has suddenly deserted them. Their mind is an appalling blank and not one relevant thought can they recall. The more they grit their teeth and summon the powers of the will, the further the desired ideas flee. ”

“ And we adults often catch ourselves reiterating some meaningless word over and over again, if by chance we once begin to utter it 'absent-mindedly,' that is, without thinking of any ulterior train of words to which it may belong. ”

“ In our momentary conscious life, such ignorance, so far as it relates to the presented contents of sense, is often due to a direction of attention which we can then and there alter by an instantaneous and voluntary shifting of our point of view. In such cases we speak of voluntary inattention, as when, in order to listen better, we neglect the facts of vision, or, in order to think better, disregard a bodily discomfort. ”

“ But even within the limits of our momentary consciousness, our attention and inattention, although expressions of our will, are not always just then alterable at will. And even so, our inattention to the countless real facts, which at any moment of our human existence we altogether fail concretely to acknowledge, is due to conditions of our attention and of our inattention which we cannot at present alter except by the infinitely numerous small steps that together make up what we call the process of experience. ”

“ Indeed, our reactions to the environment, our moral and social conduct, the affective reactions of our sentiments, instincts, feelings, and other conative tendencies, our “habits,” judgments, points of view, and attitudes of mind—all that we term character and personality—are predetermined by the mental experiences of the past by which they are developed, organized, and conserved in the unconscious. Otherwise all would be chaos. We are thus the offspring of our past and the past is the present. ”

“ Only the great instinct—the spaceless, timeless urge toward consciousness—continues its thrust of sanity. Because of it, even the maddest men are able to seize upon the illusion that they are sane by interpreting their own, spotty awareness as if it were the entirety of possible knowing. ”

“ Unless one is endowed with extraordinary self-assurance he will become, under such or similar circumstances, bashful, self-conscious, and shy, his thought confused, and he will find it difficult to respond with ready tongue. Associated ideas à propos of the matter in hand fail to enter consciousness, his thoughts become blocked even to his mind becoming a blank; he hesitates, stammers, and stands dumb, or too many ideas, in disorderly fashion and without apparent logical relation, crowd in and he is unable to make selection of the proper words. ”

“ He is not conscious of closing his mind to extraneous knowledge. His mental habits and temperament are so perfectly adjusted to the confines of this circle, that all beyond has ceased to exist for him. ”

“ The mind that can take hold of the thread of a subject, and hold fast to it in all its intricacies to the end, is enabled to do so by superior attention. Concentration is more expressive, and under whatever name, the same mental state is designated. The profound student always falls into it when absorbed in his work, and becomes “absent-minded,” which is an expression commonly used to explain one of the most inexplicable mental states. ”

“ Such a discovery not only cuts off all hope of ever attaining satisfaction, but even prevents our very wishes; since it appears that when we desire to know the ultimate and operating principle or something which resides in the external object, we only contradict ourselves, or talk without a meaning.... The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look at no opinion even as more probable or likely than another. ”

“ I would rather my patient who must rest for a long time would give up all thought of method, would give up all idea of making his mind follow any particular line of thought or absence of thought. I know that the mind which‌ has been under conscious control a good deal of the time is apt to rebel at this freedom and to indulge in all kinds of alarming extravagances. ”

“ Without disagreeable prolixities and repetitions, it is not in my power to represent what pains I took, in trying so to counteract those occupations which distracted my attention and disturbed my peace of mind, that my heart, in spite of them, might still be open to the influences of the Invisible Being. ”

“ Something outside ourselves drives us on to seek it—this evasive solution of a riddle that seems eternal—and when, weary with the effort of refusing this or the other premature solution, weary with the effort of suspending our judgment and standing erect at that parting of the ways, we long in our hearts to drift at leisure down one of the many soothing streams, it is only the knowledge that it is not our intrinsic inmost self that so collapses and yields up the high prerogative of doubt, but some lesser self in us, some tired superficial self, which keeps us back from that betrayal. ”