Listening Quotes

Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them.

~ Pope Francis

Due to previous lack of systematic assessment of dissociative symptoms, many subjects experience the SCID-D as their first opportunity to describe their symptoms in their own words to a receptive listener.

~ Marlene Steinberg

Are You Listening Attentively? There’s so much power in listening! I challenge you to listen more. Really pay attention to what people are saying. What are they REALLY talking about? Many times we overlook and/or make excuses for people’s conversations. Don’t allow people to dump garbage in your spirit. What we listen to can have a negative effect on what, and how, we think. Be choosy about the relationships you entertain. Surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you. People that are positive, inspiring, and genuine. Remember: Value your time! Don’t waste it on dead-end and/or fake relationships.

~ Stephanie Lahart

Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech.

~ Harold Holzer

I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.

~ H.w. Brands

Most of the problems in life are because:We misunderstand people's intentions, We don't listen and jump to conclusions, Then we are too proud to apologise and too stubborn to forgive.

~ Mouloud Benzadi

And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds.

~ Ray Bradbury

I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories.

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

He knew most men only heard what they wanted to hear, and he had no desire to be like most men.

~ Dan Groat

I stopped short and sighed as Derek stepped up behind me, arms sliding around my waist. I leaned back against him and rel

~ Kelley Armstrong

It is only through dialogue, deep listening, and passionate disagreement that we find our way to something larger than a singular and isolated point of view.

~ Henry Kimsey-House

She spoke of these with animation, and heard my admiring comments with a smile of pleasure: that soon, however, vanished, and was followed by a melancholy sigh; as if in consideration of the insufficiency of all such baubles to the happiness of the human heart, and their woeful inability to supply its insatiate demands.

~ Anne Brontë

The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you,” he said. “The most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying not to say.

~ Robert A. Caro

It takes courage to listen to your inner knowing … But once you hear that knowing, making a decision becomes fairly easy.

~ Joseph Jaworski

Listening is the key. The whole objective of a howl is to be heard.

~ Amit Pandey

I’ll listen if you want me to... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don’t mind that, I don’t mind listening.

~ Ayn Rand

Personal truth differs from one person to the next, so how can truth itself be a constant? At least we can listen to each other in truth.

~ Jay Woodman

He could follow someone’s mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.

~ Robert A. Caro

We talk, even if no one listens, because we never know when someone will.

~ Caitlyn Paige

To listen to what I'd heard - as if I'd already learned everything I needed.

~ Sarah J. Maas

To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.

~ Henri J.m. Nouwen

You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find remarkable change taking place in you – a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind. And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything – not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying; to the birds, to the whistle of a locomotive, to the noise of the bus gong by. You will find that the more you listen to everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between yourself and that to which you do not want to listen – it is only then that there is a struggle.

~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.

~ Chris Cleave

Can we listen to each other the way veins listen to blood?

~ Mark Nepo

At the heart of good communication, is not the process of talking, but that of listening. The first step to improve your listening skills is to stop talking. It is very difficult to talk and listen at the same time.

~ Tony Buon

Turn off the radio, TV, DVD, iPod, computer and cell phone. Then, listen.

~ Gina Greenlee

Sometimes all that’s needed to heal a wounded soul and lift a sagging spirit is one loving listener, for at its core, listening is love–love that sacrifices its need to be heard in favor of hearing, a desire to lecture in favor of learning, an opportunity to show off in favor of showing compassion. Instead of always leading the way, a patient listener, just by nodding in all the right places, can help a wanderer discover the right path on her own.

~ Claudia Barba

Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift.

~ Thomas C. Oden

Learn to listen when people are talking. Frist, it's a great art, and second, it's quite possible that when people say ne thing they mean another.

~ Julie Andrews Edwards

Anyone can talk,   but to listen is a gift,     we should all exchange

~ J. Benson

To hear is one thing, to know is another.

~ Rudyard Kipling

Listening is an act of love. When you listen to people, you are communicating non-verbally that they are important to you.

~ Jim George

Successful selling begins with listening. Your job when you are in front of the prospect is to ask questions and then listen to the answers. Take copious notes about what they tell you, what they say and what they don't say.

~ Diane Helbig

Zane raised his brow. “Didn’t I say that yesterday?” he asked, forcinghimself to be patient. Somehow.“You say that like you think I listen to you,” Ty responded instantly, asmile pulling at his lips.

~ Abigail Roux

When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak, be our silent statement.

~ Bryant Mcgill

If he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share.

~ Charles Olson

Give me a half hour's conversation. I will know more than I will reading 20 magazines.

~ Joseph Kennedy

A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.

~ Richard Rohr

It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.

~ Barbara Kingsolver

In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.

~ Sonia Sotomayor