Quotes About Listening

True listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self.

While listening is by far the most important form of attention, other forms are also necessary in most loving relationships, particularly with children. The variety of such possible forms is great. One is game-playing.

There is no better and ultimately no other way to teach your children that they are valuable people than by valuing them. Second, the more children feel valuable, the more they will begin to say things of value. They will rise to your expectation of them. Third, the more you listen to your child, the more you will realize that in amongst the pauses, the stutterings, the seemingly innocent chatter, your child does indeed have valuable things to say.

If we want to be heard we must speak in a language the listener can understand and on a level at which the listener is capable of operating.

They will observe how their children eat cake, how they study, when they tell subtle falsehoods, when they run away from problems rather than face them. They will take the time to make these minor corrections and adjustments, listening to their children, responding to them, tightening a little here, loosening a little there, giving them little lectures, little stories, little hugs and kisses, little admonishments, little pats on the back.

if you want to talk to God, it's best to do it where you don't have to shout to have yourself heard.

não basta ver uma mulher para a conhecer, é preciso ouvi-la também; ainda que muitas vezes basta ouvi-la para a não conhecer jamais.

Não há cachorrinho tão adestrado, que alfim lhe não ouçamos o latir.

Her husband didn't confess the reason for his refusal to me. He told me, too, that it was because of personal business and the serious, convinced face with which I listened to him did honor to human hypocrisy.'' The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas- Machado de Asis

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.

When the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.

When I am constantly running there is no time for being. When there is no time for being there is no time for listening.

The prayer of words cannot be eliminated. And I must pray them daily, whether I feel like praying or not. Otherwise, when God as something to say to me, I will not know how to listen. Until I have worked through self, I will not be enabled to get out of the way.

As paredes tem ouvidos. (Portuguese: The walls have ears.)

The more a man knows, the less he talks.

In this way I have sat in many rooms and walked in many gardens, and it has been as though I were a stick of furniture or a branch of a tree. I seem to have caused no sense of restraint or embarrassment. People have been able to talk freely in front of me, almost as freely as though I weren't there. I suppose some might think this a great compliment; it has given me a curious feeling of nonexistence. Now

Getting out of the way and listening is not something that comes easily, either in art or in prayer.

people don't have to explain things nearly as much as you think they do.

would want if she were able to speak, Nora

I've been in auditions without screens, and I can assure you that I was prejudiced. 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. (p.251)

Criticism is a privilege that you earn — it shouldn't be your opening move in an interaction…

Pronin calls this phenomenon the "illusion of asymmetric insight." She writes: 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.

Next time you meet a doctor, and you sit down in his office and he starts to talk, if you have the sense that he isn't listening to you, that he's talking down to you, and that he isn't treating you with respect, listen to that feeling. You have thin-sliced him and found him wanting.

they would have worried for my soul. Pronin calls this phenomenon the "illusion of asymmetric insight." She writes: 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.