Quotes About Listening

IWhen you know something, you know it, and when you don't, you'd better learn. And in the meantime, you should keep quiet, or at least speak only when what you say will advance the learning process.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music (oh yes), like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

It's not so much that I mind listening to her stories. Everybody likes to have an audience - that's why most people have kids, isn't it?

The Eagle wasn't always the Eagle. The Eagle, before he became the Eagle, was Yucatangee, the Talker. Yucatangee talked and talked. It talked so much it heard only itself. Not the river, not the wind, not even the Wolf. The Raven came and said The Wolf is hungry. If you stop talking, you'll hear him. The wind too. And when you hear the wind, you'll fly. So he stopped talking. And became its nature, the Eagle. The Eagle soared, and its flight said all it needed to say.

Silence can ask all the questions, where the tongue is prone to ask only the wrong one.

I sat listening to the birdcalls and smelling the new day's warmth touching the earth. Such things have always been a deep comfort to me. This morning they affirmed the goodness of the earth always goes on and made me wish that I could stay to watch the summer grow strong and the fruit swell on the trees. p. 65

Are you listening, Buckman? For that is your role in this conversation. You listen.' I

She loved to talk. All I need do was provide the silence.

Fool, cannot you ever speak plain?" I cried out in frustration. He halted as suddenly as if struck. In mid-pirouette, he lowered his heels to the floor and stood like a statue. "Would it help any?" he asked soberly. "Would you listen to me if I came to you and did not speak in riddles? Would that make you pause and think and hang upon every word, and ponder those words later, in your chamber?

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.

With Katharine, it seems, words are only her secondary means of communication.

But the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 1 KINGS 19:11–12

Resolve to talk more and be entertained less.

A teacher comes, they say, when you are ready. And if you ignore its presence, it will speak to you more loudly. But you have to be quiet to hear.

The listeners reciprocate the gift of the speaker's words with their attention

They live both above and below ground, joining Skyworld to the earth. Plants know how to make food from light and water, and then they give it away. I like to imagine that when Skywoman scattered her handful of seeds across Turtle Island, she was sowing sustenance for the body and also for the mind, emotion, and spirit: she was leaving us teachers. The plants can tell us her story; we need to learn to listen.

Of course you should write about it. It's supposed to be shared, otherwise how can it work? We've been waiting five hundred years for people to listen. If they'd understood the Thanksgiving then, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.

I suppose that's the way we humans are, thinking too much and listening too little. Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop. The drop swells on the tip of a cedar and I catch it on my tongue like a blessing.

They love to hear the old language," he said, "it's true." "But," he said, with fingers on his lips, "You don't have to speak it here." "If you speak it here," he said, patting his chest, "They will hear you.

Paying attention acknowledges that we have something to learn from intelligences other than our own. Listening, standing witness, creates an openness to the world in which the boundaries between us can dissolve in a raindrop.

I smile when I hear my colleagues say "I discovered X." That's kind of like Columbus claiming to have discovered America. It was here all along, it's just that he didn't know it. Experiments are not about discovery but about listening and translating the knowledge of other beings.

To be heard, you must speak the language of the one you want to listen.