Pay attention to episodes in nature that kindle an inner spark of awe and admiration. You don't have to discuss it with another being. If it has meaning to you, it's valid.

Wayne Dyer in "Your Ultimate Calling" page 23

Awareness. Attention. Absorption.

They say Buddha practiced every form of asceticism known to the India of the times, in an effort to attain enlightenment. All in vain. One day he sat under a bodhi tree and enlightenment occurred. He passed on the secret of enlightenment to his disciples in words that must seem strange to the uninitiated: "When you draw in a deep breath, oh monks, be aware that you are drawing in a deep breath. And when you draw in a shallow breath, oh monks, be aware that you are drawing in a shallow breath. And when you draw in a medium-sized breath, oh monks, be aware that you are drawing in a medium-sized breath." Awareness. Attention. Absorption.

Anthony de Mello in "The Song of the Bird" page 19

The quality of life

The quality of one's life depends on the quality of attention. Whatever you pay attention to will grow more important in your life.

Deepak Chopra

Pay attention

Pay attention, be aware, be present in life.

David Williams

An attentive mind remembers

Memory is connected with attention. An attentive mind remembers. A distracted mind forgets. Attention is energy and produces energy when we use it. It is like the battery in a car, that recharges itself in the running of the motor.

Vanda Scaravelli in "Awakening the Spine" page 77

Attention becomes more efficient

Just observe what you are. What you are is the fact: the fact that you are jealous, anxious, envious, brutal, demanding, violent. That is what you are. Look at it, be aware; don't shape it, don't guide it, don't deny it, don't have opinions about it. By looking at it without condemnation, without judgement, without comparison, you observe; out of that observation, out of that awareness comes affection. Now, go still further. And you can do this in one flash. It can only be done in one flash—not first from the outside and then working further and deeper and deeper and deeper; it does not work that way, it is all done with one sweep, from the outermost to the most inward, to the innermost depth. Out of this, in this, there is attention—attention to the whistle of that train, the noise, the coughing, the way you are jerking your legs about; attention whereby you listen to what is said, you find out what is true and what is false in what is being said, and you do not set up the speaker as an authority. So this attention comes out of this extraordinarily complex existence of contradiction, misery and utter despair. And when the mind is attentive, it can then give focus, which then is quite a different thing; then it can concentrate but that concentration is not the concentration of exclusion. Then the mind can give attention to whatever it is doing, and that attention becomes much more efficient, much more vital, because you are taking everything in. 

J. Krishnamurti in The Collected Works vol XIV, pp 301-302

Concentration

You know what concentration is - from childhood, we are trained to concentrate. Concentration is the narrowing down all our energy to a particular point, and holding to that point. A boy in school looks out of the window at the birds and the trees, at the movement of the leaves, or at the squirrel climbing the tree. And the teacher says: "You are not paying attention, concentrate on the book", or "Listen to  what I am saying." This is to give far more importance to concentration than to attention. If I were the teacher I would help him to watch; I would help him to watch that squirrel completely; watch the movement of the tail, how its claws act, everything. Then if he learns to watch that attentively, he will pay attention to the book.

Krishnamurti in "Questions and Answers" p 43

Difference between concentration and attention

There is a difference between concentration and attention. Concentration is to bring all your energy to focus on a particular point. In attention there is no point of focus. We are very familiar with one and not with the other. When you pay attention to your body, the body becomes quiet, which has its own discipline; it is relaxed but not slack and it has the energy of harmony. When there is attention, there is no contradiction and therefore no conflict. When you read this pay attention to the way you are sitting, the way you are listening, how you are receiving what the letter is saying to you, how you are reacting to what is being said and why you are finding it difficult to attend. You are not learning how to attend. If you are learning the how of attending, then it becomes a system, which is what the brain is accustomed to, and so you make attention something mechanical and repetitive, whereas attention is not mechanical or repetitive. It is the way of looking at your whole life without the centre of self-interest.

J. Krishnamurti

To be aware of inattention

Attention is this hearing and this seeing, and this attention has no limitation, no resistance, so it is limitless. To attend implies this vast energy: it is not pinned down to a point. In this attention there is no repetitive movement; it is not mechanical. There is no question of how to maintain this attention, and when one has learnt the art of seeing and hearing, this attention can focus itself on a page, a word. In this there is no resistance which is the activity of concentration. Inattention cannot be refined into attention. To be aware of inattention is the ending of it: not that it becomes attentive. The ending has no continuity. The past modifying itself is the future - a continuity of what has been - and we find security in continuity, not in ending. So attention has no quality of continuity. Anything that continues is mechanical. The becoming is mechanical and implies time. Attention has no quality of time. All this is a tremendously complicated issue. One must gently, deeply go into it. 

J. Krishnamurti Letters to the Schools vol II, p 31

Paying Attention

Central to White Buffalo Woman's message, to all native spirituality, is the understanding that the Great Spirit lives in all beings, enlivens all forms, and gives energy to all things in all realms of creation - including Earthly life...

...Ancient teachings call us to turn primary attention to the Sacred Web of Life, of which we are a part and with which we are so obviously entangled. This quality of attention - paying attention to the whole - is called among my people 'holiness'.

Brooke Medicine Eagle, quoted in "The Little Book of Native American Wisdom" by Steve McFadden page 21