Hearing Not Listening Quotes & Sayings

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. — Heather Choate Davis

It is not the hearing that improves life, but the listening. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Meditation is like hearing a voice on the telephone: there might be slight delays if the line is not perfect, but it is otherwise direct and requires no effort other than listening — Sumangali Morhall

The young people who come to me in the hope of hearing me utter a few memorable maxims are quite disappointed. Aphorisms are not my forte, I say nothing but banalities ... I listen to them and they go away delighted. — Andre Gide

This Beloved of ours is merciful and good. Besides, he so deeply longs for our love that he keeps calling us to come closer. This voice of his is so sweet that the poor soul falls apart in the face of her own inability to instantly do whatever he asks of her. And so you can see, hearing him hurts much more than not being able to hear him ... For now, his voice reaches us through words spoken by good people, through listening to spiritual talks, and reading sacred literature. God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illnesses and suffering and through sorrow he calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer he calls to us. No matter how halfhearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what he is trying to teach us. — Teresa Of Avila

You're going to listen to me, and for once you're going to hear what I say and not read between lines that aren't there. — Genna Rulon

Listening is totally different from hearing. Hearing, anybody who is not deaf can do. Listening is a rare art, one of the last arts. Listening means not only hearing with the ears but hearing from the heart, in utter silence, in absolute peace, with no resistance. One has to be vulnerable to listen, and one has to be in deep love to listen. One has to be in utter surrender to listen. — Rajneesh

I used to listen to music from the frosting down. As a word nerd, lyrics are really important to me, and then the melody. Playing in the Rock*A*Teens was the first time I ever heard music from the bottom up. I was hearing songs I'd heard a million times on oldies radio, and I'd be like, "Wow, listen to what the bass is doing!" When I was first singing in bands, I'd just get out there with my machete, wildly whacking away at the foliage. But you learn how to listen. When I feel I'm doing it right, it's 90% listening and 10% output. It's not "look what I can do!" — Kelly Hogan

Her ears, lightly fringed with white that looked silver, lifted and moved, back, forward, listening and sensing. Her face turned, slightly, after each new sensation, alert. Her tail moved, in another dimension, as if its tip was catching messages her other organs could not. She sat poised, air-light, looking, hearing, feeling, smelling, breathing, with all of her, fur, whiskers, ears
everything, in delicate vibration. — Doris Lessing

Quite often it's not about what is said, but what isn't. And even when it's spoken, read between the lines. Listening with the heart is just as important as hearing with the mind. — T.F. Hodge

I wanted to go away. It took me not listening for them to listen to me. Sometimes people don't listen until bad things happen. They realize then they should have listen instead of talked. Sometimes people are too busy hearing what they want to hear, seeing what they want to see, they don't care what's real only what they think is real. — Katie McGarry

The Chinese philosopher Chuang-Tzu stated that true empathy requires listening with the whole being: The hearing that is only in the ears is one thing. The hearing of the understanding is another. But the hearing of the spirit is not limited to any one faculty, to the ear, or to the mind. Hence it demands the emptiness of all the faculties. And when the faculties are empty, then the whole being listens. There is then a direct grasp of what is right there before you that can never be heard with the ear or understood with the mind. — Marshall B. Rosenberg

Larson had been putting up a front like he wasn't listening, but hearing that last statement from Owen made him speak up. "It's not about that," he asserted.
"It has to be," Owen disagreed. "How else am I supposed to define myself?"
"Why do you have to have a definition? A label isn't gonna make you feel any better about yourself or this situation. Stop trying to put yourself in one group or the other. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me!" Owen challenged. "My whole world has been flipped upside down thanks to you! Am I just supposed to sit back and accept that?"
Larson was beginning to boil over with repugnance. "Yes! Because that's what happens!" He was trying as hard a he could not to scream. "Things change and sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Life sucks. Deal with it! That's what I'm doing. I'm not doing it in the best way, but I'm doing it. I'm dealing with that fact that you left me. — Megan Duke

In a sense, I'm always hearing music of some sort, whether it's people talking or surface noise or whatever, because there is no privacy. So when I'm by myself, I just kind of like to be and reflect, and I can't do that when I'm listening to music. Because it's someone else's reflections, not mine. — Sarah McLachlan

Deep Listening is listening to everything all the time, and reminding yourself when you're not. But going below the surface too, it's an active process. It's not passive. I mean hearing is passive in that soundwaves hinge upon the eardrum. You can do both. You can focus and be receptive to your surroundings. If you're tuned out, then you're not in contact with your surroundings. You have to process what you hear. Hearing and listening are not the same thing. — Pauline Oliveros

As I sit there flipping through a Sports Illustrated, listening to the easy-listening station Dr. Patel pumps into his waiting room, suddenly I'm hearing sexy synthesizer chords, faint highhat taps, the kick drum thumping out an erotic heartbeat, the twinkling of fairy dust, and then the evil bright soprano saxophone. You know the title: "Songbird." And I'm out of my seat, screaming, kicking chairs, flipping the coffee table, picking up piles of magazines and throwing them against the wall, yelling, "It's not fair! I won't tolerate any tricks! I'm not an emotional lab rat! — Matthew Quick

Hearing God is not all that difficult. If we know the Lord, we have already heard His voice - after all it was the inner leading that brought us to Him in the first place. But we can hear His voice and still miss His best if we don't keep on listening. After the what of guidance comes the when and how. (11) — Loren Cunningham

So speak that I may hear, Lord, my heart is listening; open it that it may hear Thee say to my soul I am Thy salvation. Hearing that word, let me come in haste to lay hold upon Thee. Hide not Thy face from me.19 Let me see Thy face even if I die,20 lest I die with longing to see it. — Augustine Of Hippo

Aside from that i'm an introvert and i'm a quiet person. The benefit of that is I listen. It's not like my mouth is open and I broadcast everything and i'm drowning everyone out. When I'm listening to the incredible artists I work with and i'm hearing their specialized advice on what they would do with something then we can, all together, as a big collaborative group. — Jennifer Yuh Nelson

Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening. — Amy Tan

Listening is not the same as hearing and hearing is not the same as listening — Pauline Oliveros

Hotel Du Lac
Edith, once again anonymous, and accepting her anonymity, made an appropriately inconspicuous exit. And, sitting in the deserted salon, the first to arrive from the dining room, she felt her precarious dignity hard-pressed and about to succumb in the light of her earlier sadness. The pianist, sitting down to play, gave her a brief nod. She nodded back, and thought how limited her means of expression had become: nodding to the pianist or to Mme de Bonneuil, listening to Mrs Pusey, using a disguised voice in the novel she was writing and, with all of this, waiting for a voice that remained silent, hearing very little that meant anything to her at all. The dread implications of this condition made her blink her eyes and vow to be brave, to do better, not to give way. But it was not easy. — Anita Brookner

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work. — Anna Deavere Smith

What he had said to me a moment ago was true. I hadn't been listening to him, not for years. I'd wanted him to be better for so long that I had stopped hearing him tell me he was sick. For the first time I saw him now as a man, not a member of a family. A separate person, who had been trying as hard as he could for most of his life simply to get by. — Adam Haslett

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it. — Keith Richards

The prayer of listening makes things simple but it also makes us vulnerable, and that is frightening. Listening makes us open to Christ, the Word of God, spoken in all things: in the material world, the Scriptures, the Church, and sacraments and, sometimes most threateningly, in our fellow human beings. To listen at prayer is to take the chance of hearing the voice of Christ in the poor, the weak, those whom we love and those whom we do not love. — Benedict Groeschel

I am sort of proud that I think radio has become a dominant influence in shaping public opinion. Good radio paints the picture for the audience. The audience has to be actively involved. Sometimes, in television, you can get lulled into sleep watching the picture, not listening to what you're hearing. — Rush Limbaugh

Your two selves: Most people are not aware of the fact that they have two different selves. You have a mind and a spirit (consciousness), and though they seem like one thing, they are separate. The way to realize that this is true is to realize that something has to be listening to the thoughts created by your mind.

What is it that hears your thoughts?

There is the part of you that thinks and the part that hears the thoughts. The thinking part is your mind; the part that hears the thoughts is your spiritual-self. You do not actually hear thoughts through your ears, because your mind is already inside your head. The point is, your spiritual-self receives the things the mind creates in a similar way to hearing them.

Check it out: Just ask yourself, what is it that is hearing the thoughts you are thinking right now?

It is your spiritual-self, the same thing that receives all life. — Michael Smith

My dad loves to be talked about, good or bad. He just loves it. He's not even hearing the content, he's just hearing him. When I'm onstage, he's looking at the audience members and can't believe that there are strangers listening to me, and he's just delighted by the whole thing. — Sarah Silverman

Evidently neither cats nor dogs, nor other animals that listen to human music, were constituted for the appreciation of it, for it is not of the slightest use to them in the struggle for existence. Moreover, they and their organs of hearing were much older than man and his music. Their power of appreciating music is therefore an uncontemplated side-faculty of a hearing apparatus which has become on other grounds what we find it to be. So it is, I believe, with man. He has not acquired his musical hearing as such, but has received a highly developed organ of hearing by a process of selection, because it was necessary to him in the selective process ; and this organ of hearing happens also to be adapted to listening to music. — August Weismann

Journaling is the single most effective tool you may ever find for deeper intimacy with Father God and Jesus. It is a heart-to-heart method of communication with God. For you see, it is God's desire to intimately commune with you and to have you intimately commune with Him. Journaling facilitates this heart-to-heart communion - it is simply listening to each other's heart and writing it down.
Journaling helps you hear God's voice. God is speaking to you most of the time. Often you do not differentiate His voice from your own thoughts and therefore do not realize you are actually hearing God's voice. If you can learn to clearly discern His voice speaking within you, you have found the font of intimacy - the heart of God speaking to you. — Linda Boone

It's very you, that bike. Fast and dirty and loud."
"Watch it, missy. My girl hums like a lullaby."
"Oh yeah. Completely."
"You're just not listening right, that's all."
"I suppose my hearing's too sensitive."
"Just the opposite. You listen properly, behind the growl, it's all purrs. Pure pussycat. — Cara McKenna

What advantage has the person who will not listen over the one who cannot hear? — Joyce Rachelle

Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

In the Middle Ages, as in antiquity, they read usually, not as today, principally with the eyes, but with the lips, pronouncing what they saw, and with the ears, listening to the words pronounced. hearing what is called the "voices of the pages." It is a real acoustical reading. — Jean Leclercq

He who corrects a scoffer gets dishonor for himself, and he who reproves a wicked man gets insults for himself. Proverbs 9:7 Relationships are built on a foundation of effective and healthy methods of communicating. In order to communicate effectively, there must be mutual respect and a sincere interest in not only listening, but also hearing what the other party is endeavoring to express. There may not always be agreement, but there should always, always be respect. — Cindy Burrell

When I speak of good hearing, I do not mean listening to others; I mean simply listening to yourself. When I speak of good eyesight, I do not mean looking at others; I mean simply looking at yourself. He who does not look at himself but looks at others, who does not get hold of himself but gets hold of others, is getting what other men have got and failing to get what he himself has got. He finds joy in what brings joy to other men, but finds no joy in what would bring joy to himself. — Zhuangzi

And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear. — Daniel Barenboim

Listening is not merely hearing. Listening is reacting. Listening is being affected by what you hear. Listening is active. — Michael Shurtleff

He is deaf, and keen to accept,
any economical operation,
that will correct his situation.
He visited the doctor best,
and started talking on subject,
like the after-effects, and if any threats.

The doctor medically checked,
and asked him what he expects?
He expressed, he wants to be addressed-
in words, and not in signs.
And how keen he is, to have his ears listening.

He wants to listen the echo of,
sun-set over that crimson dawn.

He is keen to know, the sound of,
a blooming rose.

He wants to know what it sounds like,
when a seedling grows.

But Doctor- if you say: You are incapable,
then I better get away,
for then there is- nothing worth to be heard,
in your seemingly wordy world. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

During empathy one is simply 'there for' the other individual, when experiencing their own feelings while listening to the other, i.e. during sympathy, the listener pays attention to something about themselves, and is not 'there for' the client. Consider how you would feel if you sensed that the individual listening to you was getting into their own 'stuff' rather than hearing and reflecting exactly what you were feeling in a moment of need? — Enrico Caruso