Quotes About Listening

Meeting a stranger can be totally fleeting and meaningless, for example, unless you enter the individual's world by finding out at least one thing that is meaningful to his or her life and exchange at lest one genuine feeling. Tuning in to others is a circular flow: you send yourself out toward people; you receive them as they respond to you.

Completely desist from defending your point of view. When you have no point to defend, you do not allow the birth of an argument.

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LISTENER? 1. Not interrupting. 2. Showing that you empathize: not criticizing, arguing, or patronizing. 3. Establishing a physical sense of closeness without invading personal space. 4. Observing body language and letting yours show you are not distracted but attentive. 5. Offering your own self-disclosures, but not too many, or too soon. 6. Understanding the context of the other person's life. 7. Listening from all four levels: body, mind, heart, and soul.

Franz Kafka, the Austrian philosopher and poet, once said, "You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

Motes of dust dancing in the light - that's our dance too. We don't listen inside to hear the music - No matter. The dance goes on, and in the joy of the sun is hiding a god. - Rumi

At any moment of the day, some desire is in the process of coming true. Old seeds we planted (and perhaps forgot about) are bringing results, mixed in with the beginnings of larger results to come. The point is to make your children aware that the universe (or spirit or God) is always listening; none of us is alone. We are constantly being heeded.

Listen with regard when others talk. Give your time and energy to others; let others have their way; do things for reasons other than furthering your own needs.

Everybody talks, but there is no conversation.

It is greed to do all the talking but not to want to listen at all

The truth. I don't even know what that is anymore. Be patient. Pray about it, and listen to God. He'll help you figure it out.

But Henry didn't care how sexily I described the idea of him dead. He just listened and nodded like I was giving him directions to the next town.

Being neutral is impossible in many cases, because it may mean that you are an accomplice. You can be fair and objective only by giving a listening ear to both parties. And yet your objectivity will still be scruitinized by subjective minds.

No matter what you say or how many times you say, people always hear what they want to hear.

You hear things." "Do I?" "People talk to you." "I am very approachable.

The trick, you see—" "Is to never assume anything," she finished.

To be a writer you should read, write and talk to people, hear their knowledge, hear their problems. Be a good listener. The rest will come.

I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.

Be different-if you don't have the facts and knowledge required, simply listen. When word gets around that you can listen when others tend to talk, you will be treated as a sage.

How can I tell you what I think until I've heard what I'm going to say?

The most dangerous silence is noise; noise keeps us from hearing what we need to hear or from speaking what we need to speak.

I always said that what I do is street knowledge, you let the street know what the politicians of today are doing, and if the politicians are listening, let them know what the streets think.

It is well for one to know more than he says.

To hear is one thing, to know is another.

If you do not ask yourself what it is you know you will go on listening to others and change will not come because you will not hear your own truth.