distraction

The narrator refers to a character as "an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

To some people, employment is a distraction. To all entertainers, distraction is employment.

I needed something to distract me-anything far away from my parents_ drama-just for a second. And when I saw my chance I didn__ stop to think about how much I__ regret it later. An opportunity sat on the bar stool beside me, and I lunged at it. Literally.I kissed Wesley Rush.One second his hand lay on my shoulder, and his gray eyes rested, for once, on my face, and the next my mouth was on his. My lips were fierce with bottled emotion, and he seemed to tense, his body frozen in shock. That didn__ last very long. An instant later, he returned the aggression, his hands flying to my sides and pulling me toward him. It felt like a battle between our mouths. My hands clawed into his curly hair, tugging it way harder than necessary, and his fingertips dug into my waist.It worked better than punching someone would have. Not only did it help me release the agonizing pressure, but it definitely distracted me. I mean, it__ hard to think about your dad when you__e making out with somebody.And as disturbing as it sounds, Wesley was a really good kisser. He leaned into me, and I tugged at him so hard that he nearly fell off his bar stool. In that moment, we just couldn__ get close enough to each other. Our separate seats seemed like they were miles apart.All of my thoughts vanished, and I became a sort of physical being. Emotions disappeared. Nothing existed but our bodies, and our warring lips were at the center of everything. It was bliss! It was amazing not to think.Nothing! Nothing_ until he screwed it up.

He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention.

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our skills are tested and refined. A medical professor describes the easy familiarity with which her digital-native resident students master medical electronic records__ut is troubled by the fact that they enter data with their eyes focused on their digital devices, not on the patient in the room with them. Preoccupation with technology acts as a screen between the student and the patient__ real emotion, real fear, and real concern. It may also prevent these residents from noticing physical symptoms that the patient fails to mention. The easy busyness of medical record entry is a way to sidestep the more challenging dynamics of human connection. But experienced physicians know that interpersonal skills are essential to mastering the art and science of medical diagnosis.

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

Unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making.

Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs.

The soul is "torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

When grace has won the day, the worldling seeks the world to come.

Adoration drives obedience, but throughout history people are prone to forget the faithfulness of God yesterday.

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.