Quotes About Listening

Lighten up" (don't) turn prayer into a work but listen for God and let oneself be surprised. Overly rigid adherence to a spiritual direction built around formal liturgical adherence and highly structured prayer time can work against the sanctification of the ordinary. Christ is effectively imprisoned, to be visited at stated times and otherwise ignored".

Dear God, help me pay attention! Dear God, help me keep my mouth shut! Dear God, let me put myself out of the way! Dear God, let me be wholly present to this person, your child!

Listening is such a simple act. It requires us to be present, and that takes practice, but we don't have to do anything else. We don't have to advise, or coach, or sound wise. We just have to be willing to sit there and listen.

When a woman who has much to say says nothing, her silence can be deafening.

I've found that all it usually takes to draw out an engineer is to ask a couple of technical questions and then remain calm while listening to the answers. Most people tend to take on a blank, frightened look as soon as they realize that a technical explanation is under way; if you can resist giving this reaction and simply listen, your engineer will open up and tell you everything you ever wanted to know.

Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.

Conversation lets you be an artist every time you open your mouth--or shut it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The most important art is to omit"; the key to being a master conversationalist is to listen at least as much as you talk. Just as the other arts include pauses in a dramatic play, white margins around printed text, and space between a singer's phrases, conversation is about silences as well as about words.

I am still that child. I eavesdrop on the conversations of strangers in restaurants, in airports and supermarkets. I drive my husband crazy with questions sometimes; but I am still a good listener and I still keep secrets.

If you didn't talk, I began to realize, people assumed you couldn't hear.

The written word has taught me to listen to the human voice, much as the great unchanging statues have taught me to appreciate bodily motions. On the other hand, but more slowly, life has thrown light for me on the meaning of books.

Speak to me, Jacob, do not play the tyrant. Speak to me.

Listening - It's an old-fashioned concept, I know".

Guess when you no one's listening, you just stop talking.

Guess when you know no one's listening, you just stop talking.

And whence is courage: the unanswered question, the resolute doubt,— dumbly calling, deafly listening—that in misfortune, even death, encourages others and in its defeat, stirs   the soul to be strong?

And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.

We forget what we say much more than what we hear, what we write much more than what we read, what we send much more than what we receive, and that is why we barely count the insults we hand out to others, unlike those dealt out to us, which is why almost everyone harbors some grudge against someone.

You're not listening to any of this, are you?" As far as she was concerned, it was really a rhetorical question. Rather than answer yes or no, Esteban had a question of his own. "Would it matter?" he asked her. "You seem to like to talk, and I've got a pulse." He looked at her over the hood of the car before getting in. "I figure that's about all you require.

Most misunderstandings in the world could be avoided if people would simply take the time to ask, "What else could this mean?" Shannon L. Alder

As the music stops you'll miss its lilt. Keep dancing, keep listening. Speak up. Ask for more music, more. In case you don't know, what you want is magnificent, yours for the asking, the rhythm of magnanimous exchange.

If you think the anima as being "nothing but" what you know about her, you have not the receptiveness of a listening attitude, and so she becomes "nothing but" a load of brutal emotions; you have never given her a chance of expressing herself, and therefore she has become inhuman and brutal.

Authentic listening is not easy. We hear the words, but rarely do we really slow down to listen and to squint with our ears, to hear the emotions, fears, and underlying concerns. Kevin Cashman