listening Quotes

“Listen to many, speak to a few.”

“I just kind of listen and nod because Patrick needs to talk.”

“When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.”

“You will never be able to escape from your heart. So it’s better to listen to what it has to say.”

“I don’t want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one to whom I can tell all my most precious candy-making secrets-while I am still alive.”

“Hold fast to your beliefs and others will listen.”

“His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”

“If you tell stories, you like nothing so much as to tell them to people who want to listen.”

On Christmas eve, many years ago, I lay quietly in my bed. I did not rustle the sheets. I breathed slowly and silently. I was listening for a sound—a sound a friend had told me I’d never hear—the ringing bells of Santa’s sleigh.

“Now for every one there should be some one to whom one can speak frankly, for all the valor that one could have one becomes very alone.”

“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear.”

“At length, when the excitement subsided a little, I was able to say a few words with a chance of being listened to. “I am truly thankful to see you all safe and well, and, thank God, our expedition has been very satisfactory.”

“Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven’t the answer to a question you’ve been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you’re alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully.”

“So, listen, to yourself and to those with whom you are speaking. Your wisdom then consists not of the knowledge you already have, but the continual search for knowledge, which is the highest form of wisdom.”

“Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.”

“We’ll pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up under them. It can’t last.”

If you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it?

“Do you hear?” Vasudeva’s mute gaze asked. Siddhartha nodded. “Listen better!” Vasudeva whispered.

“Outside of these, he should listen to no one, pursue the thing resolved on, and be steadfast in his resolutions. He who does otherwise is either overthrown by flatterers, or is so often changed by varying opinions that he falls into contempt.”

“Vasudeva rose. “It is late,” he said, “let’s go to sleep. I can’t tell you that other thing, oh friend. You’ll learn it, or perhaps you know it already. See, I’m no learned man, I have no special skill in speaking, I also have no special skill in thinking. All I’m able to do is to listen and to be godly, I have learned nothing else. If I was able to say and teach it, I might be a wise man, but like this I am only a ferryman, and it is my task to ferry people across the river.” ”

“I delight in talking politics. I talk them all day long. But I can’t bear listening to them.”

“And Isi always listened, never told Enna she had been foolish, never said hollow things like ‘You’ll be all right.’ . . . Isi saw Enna’s struggle and her sadness, and she understood.”

“Well, talking to girls is easy. They’ll tell you everything. The secret to talking is listening”

“You’re a good kid. I think you have a lot to say. I’d like to hear it.”

“I stood in that room for a long time, watching the sunlight and listening to the sounds on the street outside. I stood there, tasting the room and the sunlight and the sounds, and thinking of the long hospital ward. . . Somehow everything had changed. I had spent five days in a hospital and the world around seemed sharpened now and pulsing with life.”

“Remember, if a man needs to pull away like a rubber band, when he returns he will be back with a lot more love. Then he can listen. This is the best time to initiate conversation.”

“I’ve begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.”

“When a person comes to talk to you, you should be patient and listen. Especially if he has hurt you in any way.”

“I didn’t do it for the money. I did it because the music is better if someone is listening to it.”

“We do not believe that we ‘grow’ our lives - we believe that we ‘make’ them. Just listen to how we use the word in everyday speech: we make time, make friends, make meaning, make money, make a living, make love.”

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

“Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”

“Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.”

“You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.”

“I have talked with Hui for a whole day, and he has not made any objection to anything I said;— as if he were stupid. He has retired, and I have examined his conduct when away from me, and found him able to illustrate my teachings. Hui!— He is not stupid.”

“A wise man heeds all matters great or small.”

“There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t Seymour’s Fat Lady.”

“My father and I were close once. In Jamaica, and even after we moved here, we were inseparable. Most times it felt like me and my dad—the Dreamers—against my mom and my brother—the Non-Dreamers...I listened to his stories about how our life would be after he became famous. I listened long after my mom and brother had stopped listening.”

“The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”

“What came first - the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? ”

“The thick warmth of his sleepy breath against my ear. If you have to go, I will go with you. My fears forgotten in the golden harbor of his arms. The memories come, and come. She listens, staring into the grain of the stone. We are all there, goddess and mortal and the boy who was both.”

“I began to listen with my eyes, and there is no way that your eyes don’t affect your judgement. The only true way to listen is with your ears and your heart.”

“Dancing is sometimes more important than listening to the music.”

“One thing I’ve learned about people is that the easiest way to get them to like you is to shut up and let them do the talking.”

“Being listened to and heard is one of the greatest desires of the human heart. And those who learn to listen are the most loved and respected.”

“Read this to yourself. Read it silently. Don’t move your lips. Don’t make a sound. Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything. What a wonderfully weird thing, huh?”

“Hello boys and girls. Hannah Baker here. Live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore, and this time absolutely no requests. I hope you’re ready, because I’m about to tell you the story of my life. More specifically, why it ended. And if you’re listening to these tapes, you’re one of the reasons why.”

“One thing I’ve learned about people is that the easiest way to get them to like you is to shut up and let them do the talking.”

“One who cannot listen long and patiently will presently be talking beside the point and be never really speaking to others, albeit he be not conscious of it.”

“Open your ears to God before you open your mouth to others.”

“Part of being a good parent was knowing when to say something and what to say. The HARDEST part of parenting was knowing when to say nothing and listen.”

“Listening is loving.”

“She remembered walking back from there last month, half-drunk with a gaggle of half-friends from her dorm, and when one of them asked her (only half-giving a shit) where she’d planned to go for Christmas break, Darby had answered bluntly: that it would require an act of God Himself to make her come back home to Utah. And apparently He’d been listening, because He’d blessed Darby’s mother with late-stage pancreatic cancer.”

“It’s a small town, Jazz. I keep my ear to the ground.”

“I listened to their stories and found so many areas where we overlapped – not all the deeds, but the feelings of remorse and hopelessness. I learned that alcoholism isn’t a sin, it’s a disease.”

“I wanted to be able to tell you the exact moment I fell in love with you. But I can’t do that.” “You can’t?” A pin could have dropped in the grass and it would have been heard in that moment as everyone grew perfectly silent to listen for his reply.”

“He needs water, the one who has just arrived, dry clothes, and a warm welcome from a friendly host--and if he can get it, a chance to listen and be listened to.”

This is a great story about parents not listening to their daughter and said daughter saving their home. It also has wolves...in the walls! It is just the kind of story that should be read aloud, too, full of the rhythms and repeated refrains that fit with oral story telling.

“From that day on, Angelina came downstairs when her mother called her, she tidied her room, and she went to school on time.”

″ ‘Listen Frog,’ said Toad. ‘How long have I been asleep?’ ‘You have been asleep since November,’ said Frog. ‘Well then,’ said Frog. ‘A little more sleep will not hurt me.’ ”

“Little Nutbrown Hare, who was going to bed, held on tight to Big Nutbrown Hare’s very long ears. He wanted to be sure that Big Nutbrown Hare was listening.”

The mom listening to whales sing in the bathtub while standing on one foot = yoga; and the older brother that’s a teenager in his room with headphones on and a shirt that reads, “Shut up and go away.” A good book to read as an introduction to family discussion because the family is so large, someone everyone would be able to relate to.

“No one seemed to understand her. Some wouldn’t even stay to listen.”

“I listened and looked so hard that my ears hurt and my eyes got cloudy with the cold.”

“Most of the old moles I know with they had listened less to their fears and more to their dreams.”

“The mice kept their half of the bargain and worked quite hard every day. They made sure that the flowers were always fresh and artistically arranged. They polished the congregation’s shoes while they listened to the sermon. If there was a wedding they all went outside to pick up the confetti, and if anyone had thrown rice they picked that up too and made a big rice pudding for supper.”

“Sampson, the church cat, had listened to so many sermons about the meek being blessed and everybody really being brothers that he had grown quite frighteningly meek and treated Arthur like a brother.”

“She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will.”

“Detective McSmogg was assigned to the case. He listened to their story. He scratched his chin. ‘Hmmmm,’ he said. ‘Hmmm’ ‘I think Miss Nelson is missing.’ Detective McSmogg would not be much help.”

“As she listened to his wailing, Mowzer felt a sudden strange sadness for him. How lonely he must be, she thought, endlessly hunting the men-mice in the deeps of darkness, and never returning to the rosy glow of a red-hot range. And her kind heart was moved to comfort him.”

“Those who still think that listening isn’t an art should see if they can do it half as well.”

“Tears threatened again. I sniffed and tried to control my face. No one could ever tell what Mother thought or felt by looking at her. This was a useful trait. I needed to learn how to do it. There were so many things she had tried to teach me, but I didn’t listen.”

“The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.”

“we can’t write lines for people just because we want to hear them”

“So many people, including myself, talk at each other but don’t listen. To ourselves or to other people. Believe in actively listening to yourself. Take time to have a conversation with yourself every now and again. What’s working? What could maybe use a little tweaking?”

“Meanwhile the mosquito had listened to it all from a nearby bush. She crept under a curly leaf, semm, and was never found and brought before the council.”

“When you’re following your inner voice, doors tend to eventually open for you, even if they mostly slam at first.”

“Thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. I am sure I wished no ill to King George; and if he had been there himself in proper person, it’s like he would have done as I did. No sooner had I taken out the drain than I felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind.”

″ ‘Then, Humphrey,’ replied Edward, laughing, ‘you must tell me some other time, for it is now very late, and I must go to bed, as I have to rise early. I know you have so many projects in your mind that it would take half the night to listen to them.’ ”

″ ‘No, it will not,’ replied the voice. ‘You shall not be the worse for it - I promise you that. You will be much the better for it. Just believe what I say, and do as I tell you.’ ”

“With a pleasant feeling of companionship, a sense that she was not the only living creature awake in this dark world, Griselda lay listening, contentedly enough, for the sweet, fresh notes of the cuckoo’s friendly greeting. But before it sounded again through the silent house she was once more fast asleep. And this time she slept till daylight had found its way into all but the very darkest nooks and crannies of the ancient dwelling.”

“All that night the wind blew. Simon lay in the dark and listened: to the sirens in the roof, and the stealthy slither of the mat along his floor, and the crying of the pine outside the window. Now and then in the night he work and heard them still.”

“But I wasn’t listening. I wasn’t stopping. Because we were already running away again, me and my imagination.”

“This is a season to acknowledge your value, your uniqueness. This is a season to see yourself fully for who you are. Be your own inspiration and then spark the light for others. Find your voice, trust your gut, and speak because we are all listening.”

“There was no day or night that passed when I didn’t listen for sounds from the sky. Both my sense of touch and my sense of hearing were beginning to make up for my lack of sight. I separated the sound and each became different.”

Mathew’s conversations with himself grew more and more intense - it was like listening to one end of a telephone conversation while someone argued, cajoled and reasoned with another person you couldn’t hear.

“How many of us have a true friend who loves what we do and is willing to listen for hours?”

Mrs. Norbury recognized at once that Antony was likely to be the more sympathetic listener; and when tea was over, and Bill and Angela had been dispatched to the garden with the promptness and efficiency of the expert, dear Mr. Gillingham found himself on the sofa beside her, listening to many things which were of even greater interest to him than she could possibly have hoped.

How was Anne to set all these matters to rights? She could do little more than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other; give them all hints of the forbearance necessary between such near neighbours, and make those hints broadest which were meant for her sister’s benefit.

She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation. Excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste.

Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to.

Anne felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Captain Wentworth’s pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.

He never knew that Sid lay nightly watching, and frequently slipped the bandage free and then leaned on his elbow listening a good while at a time, and afterward slipped the bandage back to its place again.