Quotes About Deafness

I always say deafness is a silent disability: you can't see, and it's not life-threatening, so it has to touch your life in some way in order for it to be on your radar.

There are normal times when it is wholly admirable to be steadfast, resolute, unconflicted, and therefore when integrity is unmistakenly a virtue. The person of integrity knows what to do, and does it. But as we have been exploring, there are also times when certainty and single-mindedness indicate something less admirable: a deafness to voices that should be heard or a blindness to aspects of a situation that need to be considered.

There are people who are born deaf and grow up deaf who don't speak at all, and some of them have told me that they resent a little bit that I do speak. But, you know, I have to be myself. I have to do what I'm comfortable doing.

I think being deaf gave me an increased sense of sight.

Deafness and sign language are extremely close to my heart.

I became deaf when I was 18 months old. And I learned to sign when I was 5 years old.

I learned to speak first, and then to sign. I have never really known what it was like to hear, so I can't compare hearing aids to normal hearing.

If you're powerful, you are much more likely to be blind and deaf to signals from outside.

When our conversations become constrained, when we avoid topics that might cause upset, when we accept comments or behavior that are hurtful, we no longer aim for harmony but rather toward a sort of deafness that allows us to stay in a relationship longer than we should.  Our senses have become dulled and we end up settling, even when we are anguished. 

I must confess that I lead a miserable life. For almost two years, I have ceased to attend any social functions, just because I find it impossible to say to people, 'I am deaf.' If I had any other profession, I might be able to cope with my infirmity; but in my profession, it is a terrible handicap.

When we say that blindness is a defect of the eyes, we prove that sight belongs to the nature of the eyes; and when we say that deafness is a defect of the ears, hearing is thereby proved to belong to their nature;—so, when we say that it is a fault of the angelic creature that it does not cleave to God, we hereby most plainly declare that it pertained to its nature to cleave to God.

I think the deafness affects me more than I realise I think it makes me more tired. I loathe parties. I attend, smile and leave.

One of the reasons I wanted to teach deaf children was because it made me very sad that they spoke so clumsily and that they moved with less grace that I knew was possible of deaf people.

In other restaurants you'll see employees signing to each other, since we also hire many deaf men and women.

Perforated eardrums were quite common16, too; but, as Haldane reassuringly noted in one of his essays, 'the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment.

Lord, thy children are jaded, and their ears go flat with sound. Marveling in the thunder rumbling of thy voice no longer - they hear not, and the omens of the white gull and the flayed oak are as naught to their purblind sight. The prophecy in the thunder, the foreshadowings of the leaves quivering white, the dismay of the grass bent in the merciless wind are naught, lord.

I don't know that hearing people have ever felt that experience of truly being left out. They have easy communication, while deaf people can't join in. It takes more time to communicate with us.

Sí, sí, el depósito de su virilidad, el origen de su fuerza, se encontraba mellado, exhausto, agónico, perdido y absolutamente sordo y desmotivado....

In the land where everyone screams, everyone is also slightly deaf.

Unbelief can render a person stone deaf to God's voice.

I am going slightly deaf in my right ear. It's tinnitus... something like that.

On the other hand, there are only so many people who really knew how she was exactly, like what did her accent sound like, and the fact that she developed profound deafness when she was first running the Harriet Lane.

And as I grew older, I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London, and they said, well, no, we won't accept you, because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.

I collect the words unheard. I pluck them from the air, rescue them from gutters, retrieve them from branches—they don't vibrate for long after the words are spoken. I often wonder if I weren't deaf whether I'd hear them. I gather them on my morning walk, along with bottles and cans from recycling bins, and again after supper at St. Joseph's soup kitchen.