Quotes About Listening

Ascolta, magari questa storia ci costringerà a prendere delle decisioni.

I listened to her litany of frustration and tried not to think about the time.

Oh, but it was such a relief to have someone to talk to. I was so unused to people who actually listened—as opposed to those, at the bar, who only wanted to hear the sound of their own voices—that talking to Sam was a revelation. He didn't interrupt, or tell me what he thought, or what I should do. He listened, and nodded.

We spend our whole lives trying to get men to talk, she thought. And then when they do we wish we were a million miles away.

As I did so, music began to echo through the apartment, first scales, then something melodic and beautiful. I stopped to listen, marveling at the sound, wondering how it must feel to be able to create something so gorgeous. I closed my eyes, letting it flow through me, remembering the evening when Will had taken me to my first concert and begun to force the world open for me. Live music was so much more three-dimensional than recorded-it short-circuited something deep within.

I pressed my ear against the door, trying to work out if it was safe to knock, feeling furtive, as if it were I who was at fault. But all I could hear was music and muffled conversation.

I guess the best thing you can do is just be there. You don't have to think her's right. But you do have to be there.

Politicians often talk too much and listen too little, which can be self-defeating, for in many instances the surer route to winning a friend is not to convince them that you are right but that you care what they think.

If everything is amplified, we hear nothing.

When I was growing up under Tom's (Tom Brown, the Tracker) watchful gaze, I often wondered why he seemed so distant and quiet so much of the time. This was why. He was stilling the chatter, quieting his mind, connecting and listening: practicing the routine of invisibility.

if you learn to listen to the silence, you'll hear more of everything else.

it is never just the robins communicating with the other robins, the song sparrows with the other song sparrows, the juncos with the other juncos. In the yard and in the trees, it's everyone communicating with (because they are eavesdropping on) everyone else—spring, summer, fall, and winter: ripples within ripples, a vast web with many seams and confusions; concentric rings bouncing off concentric rings; subtle sounds, subtle scents, subtle movements.

Bird language is about acquiring some "jungle etiquette," and the sit spot is where this starts to happen...Instead of flushing out the wrens and chickadees and robins and sparrows with a major bird plow, Jack learned to sit quietly and watch, listen, learn and connect.

The fall of Margaret Thatcher had three ingredients. Her personality went off the rails because of an excess of hubris and a want of listening. Her party went off the rails because of a surfeit of fear and a shortage of loyalty. A pincer movement of two plotters and the collapse of her support in cabinet dealt her the killer blows.

24/7 has produced an atrophy of the individual patience and deference that are essential to any form of direct democracy: the patience to listen to others, to wait one's turn to speak.

Here are just a few activities highly accomplished professional musicians consider to be practice, not in any particular order: Listening Performing Watching others perform Playing informally Improvising Teaching Composing Group rehearsal

Practicing slowly (combined with active listening) is the first concrete practice technique I've

Playing jazz is an art that is absorbed through intense listening, focused imitation, and fearless experimentation. The jazz masters learned on the bandstand. Literally.

say ninety percent of the words. She says ninety percent of the words worth listening to.

Bill Bennett really became an idol for me. I listened to him every morning from 6 to 9 for, oh, years.

the saddest thing about being the only one left to tell a story is everybody who cares to listen is gone.

Parents and leaders must establish a culture in which honest, open, respectful communication takes place, one that involves not just speaking but also listening. Without it, tragedy is waiting in the wings.

If we want God to listen to us, we have to be prepared to listen to Him. And if we learn to listen to Him, then we eventually learn to listen to our fellow humans: the silent cry of the lonely, the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the people in existential pain.

What Jacob learned – and what we learn, hearing his story – is that love is not enough. We must also heed those who feel unloved.