Listening Quotes

And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds.

She told me she loved me. She told me a lot of things. Some of those things were true, and some of those may or may not have been true. It’s kind of hard to tell, because to be honest, I wasn’t listening.

Nothing changes until people decide to do the things they must, in order to bring about peace.

There was something in the way he posed a question and followed it up with a generous pause, I think, that drew me out. I had never noticed all the pauses that were missing from most people's conversations.

One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

He seemed less in need of a secretary than of someone to listen to him.

Also the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic ear, you can hear them echoing forever within the second sphere.

I never miss a good chance to shut up

Maybe you’re so good at listening that you have no idea when to speak.” ~Braeden

What keeps [friends] together? Common history, some shared conquests, a delight in ideas and people and living. But they will also be distinguished by their ability to listen to you. They will not be uncritical, but they will understand and accept you. You will be interested in each other's happiness and well-being.

You must have realised by now that when one really cares, really tries to help, the other party recognises the fact and, therefore, easily sees the logic in working together for the greater good, for the mutual benefit of both.

Stop listening to fairy that money grows on the tree

If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically.

The subtle whispers, cues and nudges are there as guideposts, to gently carry the humble listener along the path back to the source and the true self.

Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story.

Death’s life should have listened to the moonly whispers of breathing in the coldest nights

What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.

If a man seeks you to understand him; listen closely, for what is really going on is nothing more that you manifesting your desire to seek yourself on a plateau of awareness that is not tangible

Everyone likes to reminisce, but not one wants to listen, and everyone feels annoyed when someone else tells a story.

He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.

...you listen first with the ears - then, you wait and listen for what your heart feels - then you consider what they've said - then, you reply ...

We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.

Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.

He kept telling and I kept repeating “I Know” sometimes people doesn’t need answers, they just need you to hear them what they say, make them that they are heard, Vijay was like that, he doesn’t need any one sympathizing to him, he just needed people to listen to him.

There is a difference between truly listening and waiting for your turn to talk.

I want a future abortion conversation known for its openness, respect and empathy, so instead of generating more heat, anger and conflict, I practice pro-voice.

the ultimate meaning of words cannot be found in what the listener hears but in what he listens to upon hearing

His practice was to listen noncommittally with half his mind, while he allowed the other half to lose itself in utterly unrelated , often deeply lonely musings. From the speaker's perspective it was like sticking a lance into something again and again with no result...

Good advice is not often served in our favorite flavor.

That which is currently beyond your capabilities now, does not have to be so forever

Sometimes, it is how you shine in the darkness during other people's misery that is remembered more than anything you could have said or done when you have suffered just as much.

Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103)

Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their vo

It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear.

If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.

Always listen to your soul... it speaks to you, only if you listen!

When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know.

Being a good communicator Patch, begins with listening, and listening to yourself first.

It was understood that they shared the same thresholds--the same inexhaustible appetite for wasting time, for discussing lofty ideas, for dissecting trivial things, for driving to nowhere in particular, for listening to music, for talking about books, for obsessing over pop culture, but mostly for laughing, talking, and simply being together. There was nothing one could say that the other would find too cruel or too kind. And on those rare occasions when they did tire of each other, they needed only go a day without talking before they yearned to reconnect.

We must be present enough and receptive enough to “hear” with our whole being beyond just the words that are being spoken.

You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts.

The leader who listens is the one society needs most. They don’t force their commands on people. They pay attention to their demands and set the pace for the change that society truly needs.

Listening has certainly become a scarce skill, therefore we need ways to enhance this skill especially for the next generation.

Listen with curiosity. Speak with honesty. Act with integrity.

I do listen. I just wait for the words to stop and your eyes to speak.

Where the rivers meetyou tell me of your black dreams.Your memories make me uneasy.But I listen because I knowmy listening, like all other listeningallows you to heal.

You can't fake listening. It shows.

Listening is two part, attention and thinking. The latter is what a lot of us don't do

I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen to a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband. If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate we hardly listen to what is being said. In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention, a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.

Other people feel love when we listen without judging and accept them without demanding change. We all desperately require these basic needs. When we can do this for another, we are indeed that person’s angel.

Half the time you think your thinking you’re actually listening

The best listeners are often those with the quietest heart.

It takes courage to listen to your inner knowing … But once you hear that knowing, making a decision becomes fairly easy.

It is silent, an anagram for listen. That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent.

Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in The New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, 'There's no point in our being friends if you won't let me fix you.

Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.

Communication is defined not by what is being said but by what is being heard. For this reason, it is vital that you gain a good appreciation of how other people will listen—interpret, process, and assign meaning— to what you have to say before you can influence them effectively.

When listeners become leaders, the world changes.

You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.