Quotes About Listening

Ci si innamora così, cercando nella persona amata il punto a nessuno rivelato, che è dato in dono solo a chi scruta, ascolta con amore. Ci si innamora da vicino, ma non troppo, ci si innamora da un angolo acuto un poco in disparte in una stanza, presso una tavolata, seduto in un giardino dove gli altri ballano al ritmo di una musichetta insulsa e decisiva che fa da colla di pesce per una faccia che si appunta a spilli sul diaframma del petto.

As a linguist suggests: " There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the channel works (" Hello, do you hear me?"), to attract the attention of the interlocutor or to confirm his continued attention (" Are you listening?" or in Shakespearean diction, "Lend me your ears!"— and on the other end of the wire "Um-hum!").

To say what one wants to say is a magnificent act of creation, easily overlooked because people talk so much.

I listen to it ring as I back out and start driving toward the nearest Panda Express. Cheap Chinese food--is there a better lunch?

When you stop talking, you've lost your customer. When you turn your back, you've lost her.

Hold it." Then say, "I want to hear what you have to say, and I can't when you're shouting. Can you tell us why without shouting?

Covenantally binding ourselves (behaving!) includes commitment to the as-yet undiscovered reality, love, patience, humility, listening beyond our previously conceived categories, personal openness, and embracing with hope the half-understood promise of the real, to the end of communion and . . . friendship. All knowing is, at least paradigmatically, knowing whom.

For Himme, the cumulative effect of the cumulative listening to the cumulative song was cumulatively distressing.

Experience has taught me that there are some situations in which it's better to keep quiet. That is, I tried to keep quiet. Life gives me good advice, but sometimes I refuse to take it.

We also learned to communicate our interest through body language. When the interviewee was speaking, we leaned toward her slightly. When she completed a sentence, we nodded. And we always took notes. Even if the interviewee was babbling (and this happened often enough),

In most cases, the truth is a blade that does not need to be sharpened, and we almost never need to twist the knife. Because as a listener we can empathize with the fear that what we hear might hurt, we can also work to apply gentleness when speaking. I

Só was haar ma. Spits altyd die ore. In die gesin word gesê: Ore is Ma se primêre organe. Haar hart sal al staan, dan luister sy nog. Haar pa se speelse waarskuwing: "Ma gaan ons nog eendag uit die graf afluister!

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.

We must truly listen to each other, respecting our essential brotherhood and the courage of those who try to speak, however they may differ from us in professional standing or religious belief or moral vision. We must speak and listen patiently, with good humor, with real expectation, and our dialogue can serve both truth and charity.

There is nothing more common than for people who want to talk about God to lose interest in the people they are talking to.

Language consists in equal parts of speaking and silence.

There is no way that I can preach the gospel to these people if I don't know how they are living, what they are thinking and talking about. Preaching is proclamation, God's word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become gospel.

We need alert listeners to give dignity to those stretches in our lives when we are not aware of participating in anything we think might be embraced by the kingdom of God.

In order to pray I have to be paying more attention to God than to what people are saying to me; to God than to my clamoring ego.

The Scriptures, read and prayed, are our primary and normative access to God as He reveals Himself to us. The Scriptures are our listening post for learning the language of the soul, the ways God speaks to us; they also provide the vocabulary and grammar that are appropriate for us as we in our turn speak to God.

A place of worship is a place for listening—listening to God speak. But it is also a place for answering, responding to what is spoken. God's words initiate a conversation. We come together as a congregation in worship to speak "through prayer and praise" with the God who speaks with us.

I was neither capable nor competent to form Christ in another person, to shape a life of discipleship in man, woman or child. That is supernatural work, and I am not supernatural. Mine was the more modest work of Scripture and prayer—helping people listen to God speak to them from the Scriptures and then joining them in answering God as personally and honestly as we could in lives of prayer.

The practice of prayer, if it is going to amount to anything more than wish lists and complaints, requires a recovery of personal, relational, revelational language in both our listening and our speaking.

The Bible is not a textbook. Nor is it a manual to be studied, mastered, and mechanically applied. Instead, I believe we should listen to the Word of God and reflect upon it like poetry till it infiltrates the soul.