quotations about listening
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.
EUDORA WELTY
One Writer's Beginnings
Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
G. K. CHESTERTON
"Dr. Hyde, Detective, and the White Pillars Murder", The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton
Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals.
J. ISHAM
attributed, The Zen of Listening: Mindful Communication in the Age of Distraction
Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please ... much more by listening than by talking.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
When people talk listen completely. Most people never listen.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
letter of advice to a young writer, Life Magazine, Jan. 10, 1949
Listening is harvesting what is in the speaker's mind.
MICHAEL ROST
Teaching and Researching: Listening
The receptive attitude enables one mind to fix itself to another as by spiritual grappling-irons. When you see that every word you utter us taken in, and weighed, and measured by your listener, you cannot free yourself from the influence of his presence. You are compelled to have in your thoughts not only the words you utter, but the man to whom they are spoken. You must not only talk, and talk well, but you must talk to him.
CHARLES DICKENS
"The Art of Listening", All the Year Round
Listening is seeking synchronicity with the speaker.
MICHAEL ROST
Teaching and Researching: Listening
Listening is the process of creating meaning in the speaker.
MICHAEL ROST
Teaching and Researching: Listening
Wisdom comes with talking less frivolously and listening more seriously. The latter implies a learning attitude; the former assumes an air of omniscience that does not exist.
S. K. CHAKRABORTY
An Integrated Approach
Of all bad listeners, the worst and most terrible to encounter is the man who is so fond of listening that he wishes to hear, not only your conversation, but that of every other person in the room.
CHARLES DICKENS
"The Art of Listening", All the Year Round
The humble listen to their brothers and sisters because they assume they have something to learn. They are open to correction, and they become wiser through it.
THOMAS DUBAY
Authenticity: A Biblical Theology of Discernment
Listening is one of the keys to success in all areas of your life.
RICHARD WEST & LYNN TURNER
Understanding Interpersonal Communication: Making Choices in Changing Times
Being a good listener is easy -- simply listen with your ears, as well as your heart.
CHAD LOVE LIEBERMAN
The Bank of Knowledge
An appreciative listener is always stimulating.
AGATHA CHRISTIE
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
The best way to make a long story short is to stop listening.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
Listen not to the words of a fool.
PTAH HOTEP
attributed, Day's Collacon
I think the willingness to listen is really a matter of confidence. You can't be so superconfident in your abilities that you ignore what others say, and you can't be so diffident in your abilities that you think that if they say something, you will be so taken in that you will do the wrong thing. When you are confident about your abilities and also fully aware of what you don't know you are willing to listen to outside experts with the full sense that if you don't find it worthwhile you will ignore it.
RAGHURAM G. RAJAN
"A Conversation with Chief Economic Adviser Raghuram G. Rajan", The New York Times, Oct. 6, 2012
There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too.
KATHERINE HANNIGAN
Ida B ... and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World