110 Listening Quotes

Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.

The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.

A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself.

The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music.

My basic rule is to speak slowly and simply so that my audience has an opportunity to follow and think about what I am saying.

The most called-upon prerequisite of a friend is an accessible ear.

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

He who takes not counsel of the Unseen and Silent, from him will never come real visibility and speech.

Ask the world to reveal its quietude- not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else.

Sit and be still until in the time of no rain you hear beneath the dry wind's commotion in the trees the sound of flowing water among the rocks, a stream unheard before, and you are where breathing is prayer.

To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.

Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorled ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

We cannot be speakers who do not listen. But neither can we be listeners who do not speak.

'Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive.' He smiled. 'It helps you listen.'

I believe that everyone is the keeper of a dream- and by tuning into one another's secret hopes, we can become better friends, better partners, better parents, and better lovers.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

Silence sweeter is than speech.

Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others. Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot. Edward Smith: What, and don't make you talk? Andy Warhol: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person. Edward Smith: [laughs] Thank you, Andy.

The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation-or a relationship.

There are many that I know and I know it. They are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it. Always I listen to it. Slowly I come to understand it. Many years I listened and did not know it. I heard it, I understood it some, I did not know I heard it. They repeat themselves now and I listen to it. Every way that they do it now I hear it. Now each time very slowly I come to understand it. Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I understand it.

The pain of dispute exceeds by much its utility. All disputation makes the mind deaf; and when people are deaf I am dumb.

So he believed. Believed, but the seed of doubt was there, and it stayed, and every now and then sent out a little root. It changed everything, to have that seed growing. It made [him] listen more carefully to what people meant, instead of what they said. It made him wise.

When you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.

In order that all men may be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see. [citation needed]

'The little folk dare anything', said his friend. 'And they talk a lot of nonsense. But they talks an awful lot of sense, as well. You listen to 'em at your peril, and you ignore 'em at your peril, too.'

The weekend began with the expectation that there would be a series of lectures and informative discussions with emphasis on content. It gradually emerged that something more important was actually involved - the awakening of the process of dialogue itself as a free flow of meaning among all the participants. In the beginning, people were expressing fixed positions, which they were tending to defend, but later it became clear that to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group was much more important than to hold any position. Such friendship has an impersonal quality in the sense that its establishment does not depend on a close personal relationship between participants. A new kind of mind thus begins to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change. In this development the group has no pre-established purpose, though at each moment a purpose that is free to change may reveal itself. The group thus begins to engage in a new dynamic relationship in which no speaker is excluded, and in which no particular content is excluded. Thus far we have only begun to explore the possibilities of dialogue in the sense indicated here, but going further along these lines would open up the possibility of transforming not only the relationship between people, but even more, the very nature of consciousness in which these relationships arise.

His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought. Ch.2, p.35

To listen to someone is to put oneself in his place while he is speaking. To put oneself in the place of someone whose soul is corroded by affliction, or in near danger of it, is to annihilate oneself. It is more difficult than suicide would be for a happy child. Therefore the afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard. That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self. [p.71]

I swear people don't want sex so much as they want somebody who'll listen to 'em ... the first thing you learn after fellatio is how to listen.

The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eyes for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.

Kabir says: Listen to the word spoken in every body.

A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence.

None is so deaf as those that will not hear.

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

The ear does it. The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Mozart's music is an invitation to the listener to venture just a little out of the sense of his own subjectivity.

Lengthy immersion in the works of other composers can tire. The music of Mozart does not tire, and this is one of its miracles.

Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day! ~ Gioacchino Rossini

Does it not seem as if Mozart's works become fresher and fresher the oftener we hear them? ~ Robert Schumann