Quotes About Listening

Incline your ear, O LORD, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. (Ps. 86:1) O LORD, God of my salvation; I cry out day and night before you. Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry! (Ps. 88:1–2)

If man spoke only when he had something worth while to say and said that as quickly as possible, ninety-eight per cent of the human race might as well be dumb, thereby establishing a heavenly harmony from pate to tonsil.

She lay for a long time listening to the mysterious sounds given forth by old houses at night, the undefinable creakings, rustlings, and sighings, which would have frightened Virginia had she remained awake, but which sounded to Nan like the long murmur of the past breaking on the shores of a sleeping world.

But they're too shy to speak when my mother-in-law doesn't; sometimes they open their mouths to begin, but they never get as far as the first sentence. You must get used to an ocean of silence, and just swim about in it as well as you can.

I was aware of the treacherous air vents above us, conducting the sounds we were making upstairs. Maybe dad was listening. Or maybe, just like Kevin, he was unaware of anything but the pleasure spurting up out of his body and into mine.

is the unseen guest at every table, the silent listener to every conversation"—her mother thereby inferring that she too would be the unseen guest and the silent listener to every conversation.

I wanted to tell you somethin, and I have been workin my mind so the words will tumble out in a straight line. You know how that can be, John. I do, Barnum. Just set them words one by one and they'll do fine and we'll get where we got to go.

You barely realize what just happened. It is called faith. You just turned in Jesus' direction and you are listening. You want what he offers.

In our attempts to help, we can overinterpret suffering

Who in your life is one step ahead of you in knowing people? What does that person do?

We don't aim to draw out problems so that we can be helpers. We are simply interested in knowing another person, which is a basic feature of everyday love.

What do you see when you look and what do you hear when you read?

There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.

With Ham-it-up vampires, the do and say distinction begins with listening to the actual content of their words. These vampires seldom lie, but they seldom tell the whole truth, except when it slips out between the lines. Pay attention to detail. Ask questions to determine the who, what, when, where, and why of situations before assuming you know what's going on.

I wanted to be a doctor that I might be able to work without having to talk because for years I had been giving myself out in words.

Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.

Miente. Bea miente, como mentimos todas. No escribe para que la escuchen. Escribe porque no la escuchan. No es lo mismo. O puede que sí.

We stood there, squeezing each other's hands as though trying to press through the flesh to the bones and then beyond. She kissed my cheek and neck, and I felt the joy of omnipresent love -- everything around me speaking about me with affection, and Mary was listening.

Si potrebbe però, tanto nelle cose piccole, come nelle grandi, evitare, in gran parte, quel corso così lungo e così storto, prendendo il metodo proposto da tanto tempo, d'osservare, ascoltare, paragonare, pensare, prima di parlare. Ma parlare, questa cosa così sola, è talmente più facile di tutte quell'altre insieme, che anche noi, dico noi uomini in generale, siamo un po' da compatire.

Most of this long and twisted course could have been avoided, however, in both lesser and greater affairs, if the tried and true methods of observing, listening, comparing, and thinking before speaking had been adopted. But speech, by itself, is so much easier than all the rest put together that we, too—by which I mean we humans in general—deserve a measure of indulgence. Skip

The root meaning of the word dialogue is "to speak across," "to speak beyond." This suggests that the crucial element is space, both social and geo- graphic: the distance, the difference, the otherness between the two partners involved

it is important that we enter the interview with a great degree of flexibility, ready not only to accept the narrator's agenda but also to modify our own.

An interview, then, is a moment in a relationship between times: the time of the events, the time of the telling, and, when we factor in the archive, the time of listening.

There's a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It's so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing.