Best 1940 quotes in «listening quotes» category

I have come to understand that the voice of God is all around me. God is not a silent God. God is speaking to me all the time. In everything. Through everyone. I am only now beginning to listen, let alone to hear.

I have taken on many Understandings in my life [...]. I have listened to another Messenger's incomprehensible signals in the night. The thing you call God is not even alone in the sky. It is a thing of metal that demands we make more things of metal - and I have seen it, how small it is.

I have witnessed how the power of listening, storytelling and embracing gray areas breaks through the rigid 'us vs. them.

I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick listening. It breaks down prejudices and stereotypes; it widens self-imposed limits; it takes one into another's life, her hard times and, if there is any, her joy too.

I listened, while the scents found their hiding places in the cracks in the floorboards, and the words of the story, and the rest of my life.

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.

I love people who play guitars on roofs!" said Rose, hopping along the pavement in one of her sudden happy moods. "Don't you?" "Never knew anyone else who did it!" "Don't you like Tom?" "Of course I do. But I don't know about all the other guitar-on-roof players! They might be really awful people, with just that one good thing about them. Playing guitars on roofs... or bagpipes... Or drums... Sarah would like that, and Saffy could have the bagpipes! Caddy could have a harp.... What about Mum?" "One of those gourds filled with beans!" said Rose at once. "And Daddy could have a grand piano. On a flat roof. With a balcony and pink flowers in pots around the edge! And I'll have a very loud trumpet! What about you?" "I'll just listen," said Indigo.

I love to write and to get to know the people who are listening.

I'm like a dog. I never speak but I understand.

I'm not a clever man, but I'm willing to listen to people who are, and I think you are. Just don't try poking me in the direction you want me to go. I don't like that Master Balwer.

Infusing the cultural war with love, respect and empathy is the responsibility of every one who cares about the health and wellbeing of women, our families and communities, and our democracy.

In addition to an open heart and open mind, I also brought (to the small group Bible study) an open mouth.

In some ways, we will always be different. In other ways, we will always be the same. There is always room to disagree and blame, just as there is always room to take a new perspective and empathize. Understanding is a choice.

In listening lies great power. Many are expert in speaking (while everyone hears), adept in analyzing in bits and pieces, very prompt in commenting, and always ready to stamp judgement of 'right' or 'wrong'. Very few are skilled in listening, first, with the ears and, then, with the heart. Those who do hold true, sustainable, and great power.

In many ways, the aspect of the story of Christ that we both find so compelling and relatable is God’s choice to experience the discomforts of being human as a sign of his love for us. … Living in community with other people … is uncomfortable. We have ideas that test each other. We have vigorous and painful disagreements. Rather than being discouraged, we can recognize our discomfort, ease into it, and share the experience of being human together.

In order to be effective, be responsive. In order to be responsive, listen.

In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young anymore—-need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.” It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners.

Instead of seeing how much pain I can dish out towards those I disagree with, or who I believe have done me wrong, I seek to follow the golden rule and use my words and behavior to create more of what the world needs – love, compassion, and connection.

In order to understand the impact you can have on another's life by listening you need to first be intimate with the experience of being heard.

In the past, I have all too often listened without hearing, asking questions when I had no intention of hearing the answer or understand my customer’s requirements.

I stopped short and sighed as Derek stepped up behind me, arms sliding around my waist. I leaned back against him and relaxed. “Thought I told you to come home,” he said, bending to my ear. There was no trace of anger in his voice now. “Did you really expect me to listen?” Now it was his turn to sigh. “Always worth a shot.”

In the war zone of arguments, debates, criticism - silence is the safe house.

In this vast cosmic orchestra, peace is the music of every heart. Our glory lies in understanding, listening and honoring that music.

Intimacy calls for listening and speaking both. Listening to a person’s changing emotions and speaking about your own emotions. Intimacy flourishes by knowing and being known.

Io non posso abituarmi a vivere in un mondo dove l'ascolto ha un prezzo, non posso delegarlo a una categoria professionale.

It comes down to this: If you want to be seen, heard and understood in the most genuine way possible, be open to the possiblity of vulnerability. Allow yourself to be open. I know it’s a scary place, a place very few people dare to venture, but just try it. Try moving the masks away and really looking at a person the next time they engaged in conversation with you.

I should become happier at what I do and leave others happier than before they’d met me.

It 'appens to be true. An' if'n yew want ter stay moi friend, yew'd best 'old yer turpitudinous twaddle of a tongue an' listen fer once.

I tend to avoid people who always have something to say … and those who expect me to always have something to say.

It's very important to know when to stop explaining yourself, because not everyone with ears listens with them.

I thought of you when I read this quote from "Come Rain or Come Shine (A Mitford Novel)" by Jan Karon - "Listening is among the most generous ways to give. When a loved one talks to us— whether their words appear to be deep or shallow— listen. For in some way, they are baring their souls.

It's always the mind that needs quietening and the heart that needs listening to.

It is a tremendous gift to simply and truly listen to another.

It is difficult to learn anything worthwhile if you only listen to those who share your views.

It is more important that we listen to others than to always be speaking, for in that way we learn what there is to know. We should be easy to talk to, and grateful for new information.

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.

It is precisely when we hear little from our partner which frightens, shocks, or sickens us that we should begin to be concerned, for this may be the surest sign that we are being gently lied to or shielded from the other’s imagination, whether out of kindness or from a touching fear of losing our love. It may mean that we have, despite ourselves, shut our ears to information that fails to conform to our hopes — hopes which will thereby be endangered all the more. My view of human nature is that all of us are just holding it together in various ways — and that’s okay, and we just need to go easy with one another, knowing that we’re all these incredibly fragile beings.

It is silent, an anagram for listen. That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent.

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

It takes patience to listen. It takes skill to pretend you’re listening.

It was hard to listen to her all the time without getting to say anything back

I’ve learned to get really good at this—say one thing when I’m thinking about something else, act like I’m listening when I’m not, pretend to be calm and happy when really I’m freaking out. It’s one of the skills you perfect as you get older. You have to learn that people are always listening. [...] Sometimes I feel as though there are two me’s, one coasting directly on top of the other: the superficial me, who nods when she’s supposed to nod and says what she’s supposed to say, and some other, deeper part, the part that worries and dreams and says “Gray.” Most of the time they move along in sync and I hardly notice the split, but sometimes it feels as though I’m two whole different people and I could rip apart at any second.

I want you to start realising how far away you are from being able to listen professionally.

I wanted, for so long, for someone to understand me better than I understood myself, to take control of me, to save me, to make it all better. I thought that the hardest part of a loving, mutually healing relationship would be showing my vulnerable, raw spots to a person, even though I'd been hurt so many times before. This has not been the hardest part. The actual hardest part has been realizing that no one, no matter how compassionate and kind they are, will say the perfect things always. Myself included. The hardest part has been learning to communicate what I need, to hear what others need, to tell others how to tell me what they need. Intimacy takes communication. A lot of it. We all have triggers. I don't know your triggers, and you don't know mine. No matter how much I love or trust you, you cannot possibly know exactly the words I need to hear, the words I don't want to hear, and the way I like to be touched. And how strange that we expect these things of each other. How strange (and self-sabotaging) that we refuse to get into relationships and friendships with people unless they treat us in just that perfect way. We've been raised to want fairy tales. We've been raised to wait for flawless saviors to rescue us. But the savior isn't flawless and the savior is not coming. The savior is you. The savior is still learning. The savior is never done learning. The savior is a human being. Forget perfect. Forget flawless. And start speaking your truth. Start speaking what you want and how you want it. And start asking and listening, really listening, to what the people around you say. Maybe, then, we will stop abandoning and hurting each other. Maybe, then, there's hope for us.

I want to listen to accomplished women scarred by sexism that still walk in elegance and kindness; hear powerful men that have a heart to serve. I want to talk to the brokenhearted that still believe in love; I want to listen to people that laugh even when they hurt. You live God's grace without even knowing it and to me, you're the best of all of us.

I was born with the ability to see in metaphor.

I was so sure that I knew what they needed and what I wanted to sell them that I never stopped long enough to find out what it was they wanted to buy.

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted. In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it. ("The Graveyard Reader")

I wish I had heard him more clearly: an oblique confession is always a plea.

Listening is an attitude of the heart, a genuine desire to be with another which both attracts and heals. (attr to J. Isham)