Mental Absence Quotes

Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)

She’s never where she is,' I said. 'She’s only inside her head.

Our minds have a tendency to wander. To duck and feint and keep us at a slight remove from the moment at hand.

What a mysterious thing madness is. I have watched patients whose lips are forever sealed in a perpetual silence. They live, breathe, eat; the human form is there, but that something, which the body can live without, but which cannot exist without the body, was missing.

I never live in the present. I'd do interviews and people will say, 'Isn't this great?' or 'Can you believe?' And I would react, like, 'No, I can't believe it because I'm not living in this moment.'

Whenever Percy stopped by to see [Annabeth], she was so lost in thought that the conversation went something like this: Percy: 'Hey, how's it going?' Annabeth: 'Uh, no thanks.' Percy: 'Okay...have you eaten anything today?' Annabeth: 'I think Leo is on duty. Ask him.' Percy: 'So, my hair is on fire.' Annabeth: 'Okay, in a while.

Every one knows, that the mind will not be kept from contemplating what it loves in the midst of crowds and business. Hence come those frequent absences, so observable in conversation; for whilst the body is confined to present company, the mind is flown to that which it delights in.

You'd think that radio was around long enough that someone would have coined a word for staring into space.

What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

Bodily decay is gloomy in prospect, but of all human contemplations the most abhorrent is body without mind.

You're watching your kids playing football, and you're not present. It's like the worst... it's horrible. I despise myself for it. I think it's a particularly male thing. Being present and in the moment with your kids is something a lot of men struggle with.

dead in the mind, meanin you're present but your ignorance only makes ur presense worse!

I understand there are some men who are only half here. Let's not say men. Let's say people. People who are more or less obscure at times.

..holding a book but reading the empty spaces.

There's a look people get in their eyes when you're talking to them and they're not seeing you, and you know it's because they have a movie running through their head.

I've heard from CEOs of major corporations and members of Congress talk about their spouses getting mad at them when they're home because they're spaced out and thinking about work. It's so easy for all of us to have our mind on the last meeting or the next one.

I let my mind wander and it didn't come back.

The mind picks some very bad times to take a walk doesn't it?

I was filled with dread at the thought my mind had skipped town and left me behind to pay the rent." --Dexter

The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.

If you are mentally somewhere else, you miss real life

The mere thought hadn't even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.

This is the sleep: being absent, being not present to the present moment, being somewhere else.

Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body came to be called in question by it.

He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.