Quotes & Sayings About Truly Listening

I believe God spoke to you at cliffs. Her hand came to rest on the top of my head. But perhaps you weren't truly listening — Jenny B. Jones

Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in The New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, 'There's no point in our being friends if you won't let me fix you. — James Martin

One of the positives to being visibly damaged is that people can sometimes forget you're there, even when they're interfacing with you. You almost get to eavesdrop. It's almost like they're like: If nobody's really in there, there's nothing to be shy about. That's why bullshit often tends to drop away around damaged listeners, deep beliefs revealed, diary-type private reveries indulged out loud; and, listening, the beaming and brady-kinetic boy gets to forge an interpersonal connection he knows only he can truly feel, here. — David Foster Wallace

By listening with active openness, they help other people to articulate their own values more clearly and so to bring a richer vision of value into the relationship. "Under the relational conception of power, what is truly for the good of anyone or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is an emergent from deeply mutual relationships."6 — C. Robert Mesle

DJ-ing itself is not just about playing songs. The art of DJ-ing is presenting new songs to the crowd that they haven't heard before and creating a party vibe that's different than just listening to anybody's playlist. It's the only way to truly be big and respected in your craft. — TyDi

I think the American electorate should work a little harder at getting informed. That includes hearing, truly listening, to what the other side is saying. Whether you're left or right. — Jeff Daniels

We know that when people learn to communicate effectively with each other, their lives and their relationships can be truly transformed. This book gives people both a way of expressing their needs congruently and non-blamefully and a way of listening so others feel not just heard, but understood. — Thomas Gordon

Community as openness ...
Communities are truly communities when they open to others, when they remain vulnerable and humble; when the members are growing in love, in compassion and in humility. Communities cease to be such when members close in upon themselves with the certitude that they alone have wisdom and truth and expect everyone to be like them and learn from them.
The fundamental attitudes of true community, where there is true belonging, are openness, welcome, and listening to God, to the universe, to each other and to other communities. Community life is inspired by the universal and is open to the universal. It is based on forgiveness and openness to those who are different, to the poor and the weak. Sects put up walls and barriers out of fear, out of a need to prove themselves and to create a false security. Community is the breaking down of barriers to welcome difference. — Jean Vanier

To truly understand a person, stop talking and start listening. — Amey Hegde

Countless times, I have found that it is only during the physical exam that patients reveal what is truly on their mind. Whether it is the cough that they are reminded of now that I am listening to their lungs, or whether it is the domestic violence, the eating disorder or the genital symptoms that they feel comfortable revealing once we are in a more intimate setting - there is something about touch that changes the dynamic. — Anonymous

Anything John Stott says is worth listening to. Anything he writes is worth reading. Basic Christianity is not only a classic must-read for every believer; it is truly a blessing preserved on the written page for the enrichment of this generation and those to come. — Anne Graham Lotz

Silence. Her eyes on mine. But unlike Kitsey - who was always at least partly somewhere else, who loathed serious talk, who at a similar turn would be looking around for the waitress or making whatever light and/or comic remark she could think of to keep the moment from getting too intense - she was listening, she was right with me, and I could see only too well how saddened she was at my condition, a sadness only worsened by the fact she truly liked me: we had a lot in common, a mental connection and an emotional one too, she enjoyed my company, she trusted me, she wished me well, she wanted above all to be my friend; and whereas some women might have preened themselves and taken pleasure at my misery, it was not amusing to her to see how torn-up I was over her. — Donna Tartt

Assumptions can blind you; hypotheses can guide you. Good negotiators expect surprises; great negotiators reveal the surprises. Negotiation should be seen as a process of discovery. If you think you're too smart to discover anything new, then you will be a terrible negotiator. Until you know who or what you are dealing with, you are actually in the dark and should proceed with caution. Listening well does not come easily to most. By truly listening, you will disarm your opponent, giving them a sense of calm and a feeling of safety. Talking about wants gives us an illusion of control; needs are required to survive and make us feel vulnerable. The biggest mistake a negotiator can make is to rush things. By slowing down the process, you are able to calm down the situation. A soothing but confident voice helps in confrontational situations. Mirroring relies on the fact that we fear what's different and are drawn to what's similar. — Book Summary

Anyone can be a great negotiator, I told them, and in fact it often pays to be quiet and gracious, to listen more than talk, and to have an instinct for harmony rather than conflict. With this style, you can take aggressive positions without inflaming your counterpart's ego. And by listening, you can learn what's truly motivating the person you're negotiating with and come up with creative solutions that satisfy both parties. — Susan Cain

Truly listening, attentively, and with care, is one of the simplest and most kind gifts we can give anyone. — John Bruna

I have a whole iPod full of exceptionally bad music, truly awful stuff including a disproportionate number of one hit wonders from the early '80s and lots of hair bands. I find it utterly impossible to love a song until I know every single word, so listening to live music or new bands is pretty much out. — Lauren Weisberger

There were so many other people in my life.
I had spent all of my time listening,
learning the longings we all have in common.
I never took the time to hear them in myself
and I heard them speaking to him.
The desire for desire, that hope
for hope, the possibility of everything
truly possible. I had so many friends,
so many nods and conversations,
so many things I'd always wanted
to say to someone. — David Levithan

In truly listening to our most painful songs, we can learn the divine art of forgiveness. — Jack Kornfield

These books have not made George nobler or better or more truly wise. It is just that he likes listening to their voices, the one or the other, acording to his mood. He misuses them quite ruthlessly - despite the respectful way he has to talk about them in public - to put him to bed, to take his mind off the hands of the clock, to relax the nagging of his pyloric spasm, to gossip him out of his melancholy, to trigger the conditioned reflexes of his colon. — Christopher Isherwood

Are you quick to listen? Listening is an expression of humility and genuine concern for others. ... .If we want to truly know and understand other people, we have to care what they feel and think, not arrogantly assume that we already know. — Joshua Harris

There is a difference between truly listening and waiting for your turn to talk. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Should I go to graduate school? What if I made the wrong choice? These questions arise not because there is no pat but because we expect there to be a single one. Uncertainty should invite curiosity and reflection, but instead it generates fear.
Learn to accept uncertainty as an important step to true self-discovery. To start finding your path, begin listening to that inner voice. Tap into what you think and feel, what you truly care about. Don't worry about finding your passion and life's calling immediately. Those usually takes time. But do avoid becoming a passenger in your own life. — Rachel Simmons

I've missed the silence of you listening to me." Shahrzad attempted a weak smile. "No one listens to me as you do." His expression turned quizzical. "You don't wait to speak," she clarified. "You truly listen." "Only to you," Khalid replied gently. — Renee Ahdieh

You will never be able to truly step inside another person, to see the world as he sees it, until you develop the pure desire, the strength of personal character, and the positive Emotional Bank Account, as well as the empathetic listening skills to do it. — Stephen Covey

Listening is one of the most important things a brand can do online. If your brand is just broadcasting its own agenda, it isn't truly engaging in a conversation. — Jeremy Goldman

A truly successful life is one filled with friends so it helps if people like being around you. If you suspect they don't, have a think about how strongly you exhibit 'likeable' qualities such as listening well, being trustworthy, kind, generous, compassionate, fun, positive and unselfish. The good news is that you can learn such qualities even if they don't come naturally to you. — Nigel Cumberland

Christians can not truly evangelize unless they are prepared to be evangelized in the process. In sharing the good news, people are enriched by the spiritual insights, honest questions and depth of devotion demonstrated by those of other faiths. Including others involves listening to them, learning from them. Much of what exists in other faiths may not necessarily be hostile to the kingdom. Christians can learn a lot from other walks of life. — Eddie Gibbs

Truly, love is something a lot more than to sleep with someone else, more than just to talk with that person. It's to think of that person, wanting them to be happy, to wish them well, to care about them, showing consideration, listening when they are happy or when they're sad, encouraging, it is to show your love, to make that someone feel special, it is always waiting to hear their voice, keeping them in your mind, in your thoughts, and in your heart. — Jose N. Harris

If someone's really busy listening to other CDs, and worried about what's new and what's truly relevant for discourse now, maybe it isn't that interesting. To me it is, because I'm tuned into that and that's what I like, so it's interesting to me. It's all I can do. — Stephen Malkmus

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

If we truly want to learn, we never learn when we are talking. We only learn when we are listening. — James Altucher

Most of all I found myself listening- listening in the acutely active way that makes dialogue a truly hermeneutical act. Hermeneutics is the science of the interpretation of texts. Hermeneutics helps bring the meanings in texts to expression. Conversation as a hermeneutical enterprise helps persons bring their own meanings to expression. With sensitive, active listening we "hear out of" each other things we needed to bring to word but could not, without an other. This is Martin Buber's "I Thou" relationship with its dialogical transcendence; this is Reuel Howe's "miracle of dialogue. — James W. Fowler

Prayers often begin as memories. When we remember those whom we have loved, and miss them, naturally we hope for their safety and their happiness, wherever they might be. That hope turns into a wish, and whenever a wish is voiced, even silently, even without words, it becomes a supplication. Perhaps we don't know to whom we're speaking; perhaps we ask before we truly know who's listening, or before we even believe that listener exists. But I judge it a very fine beginning, to make a practice of remembering those people we have loved. When we remember others fondly, we wish them health and happiness and all good things. — Eleanor Catton

Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about-quite apart from what I would like it to be about-or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions. — Parker J. Palmer

On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions. — Jon Landau

Like maybe he really, truly believes I'm worth listening to, worth saving. — Matthew Quick

Recreational talking is, along with private singing, one of our saddest recent losses. Like singing, talking has become a job for trained professionals, who are paid considerable sums of money to do it on television and radio while we sit silently listening or, if we're truly lonely and determined, call the station and sit holding the phone waiting for a chance to contribute our two cents' worth. — Barbara Holland

Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace.
The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water's edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above. — Nicholas Evans

You need to write your own book, the book of your heart and not chase the fads. It truly has to be the story you want to tell, it needs that fire, your fire in it. Then enjoy the time pre-publication. It is time to learn all you can about your craft and the industry. It isn't a race. Finally listen to your work. I have text to voice software that reads the books to me. Listening I can hear things that I would miss on the page. — Liz Fenwick

It's all about the music. For me, that's truly what I live for. Just music constantly. Always listening to, writing, or playing music. That's definitely me. — Tommy Lee

. . . the authors had developed indices that could be employed to measure the state of a civilization, to determine if society was healthy, in decline, or perhaps even dead. The indicators keyed in on everything from the accumulation of refuse to declines in everyday civility. They looked at how a society treated its most vulnerable citizens; examined a culture's architecture, gauging its scale in relation to humans and the surrounding natural world. One of the primary indicators, however, was a measure of the ability of a society's citizens to listen to each other and truly hear what was being said. It evaluated by gradations the ability of individuals to stand motionless for prolonged periods, receptive to their surroundings. — Robert H. Lieberman

True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship. — Eckhart Tolle

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

Whether one is Marian or Charismatic or both, or prays in one or more of the many other ways open to us, it is all a flow of love, if the heart is truly speaking to and listening to the Holy Trinity. Personally, I pray the Divine Mercy chaplet every day. We pray the Rosary every day in our family. — Michael O'Brien

The key to good listening isn't technique, it's desire. Until we truly want to understand the other person, we'll never listen well. — Steve Goodier

I sat and asked God a question, never before now had I felt he was truly listening; Or was it i, that disrupted his appearance ...
Why God, must the treasures of our world be hard done by and the enemies of life become greater in their scheme of manipulation?
Oh dear one, I chose the strong ones to hand the deepest lessons, because I know they can handle it and soon enough they will too.
The ones that twiddle their thumbs and become ignorant to what's their truth; will attract what they are and continue in the circle of vicious greed. They'll eventually grow, like you did too.
It may just take time, and your time now is bettering your existence from the struggle you've faced. — Nikki Rowe

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind," he said, "That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind."
I looked up at him, and said the next line, "To war and arms I fly."
"True, a new mistress now I chase," he said.
"The first foe in the field," I said, and let him draw me closer.
"And with a stronger faith embrace," he said.
"A sword, a horse, a shield." And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.
"Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore," he whispered against my hair.
I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more. — Laurell K. Hamilton

As the poet Wordsworth once said, 'Fatherhood is truly the most...HEY! You kids put down those hatchets RIGHT NOW!' The poet Wordsworth's point was that, although fatherhood is a rewarding experience, it's an experience that you will sometimes wish was rewarding somebody else. Nevertheless, if you ask any dad if fatherhood is worth it, he will immediately answer yes. Why? Because his wife might be listening. — Dave Barry

I want the young people to pay attention because, see, back when I first met Barack, we started dating, he had everything going for him. All right, ladies, listen to this. This is what I want you to be looking for. Yes, he was handsome-still is. I think so. He was charming, talented, and oh-so smart, truly. But that is not why I married him. Now, see, I want the fellas to pay attention to this. You all listening? What truly made me fall in love with Barack Obama was his character. You hear me? It was his character. It was his decency, his honesty, his compassion and conviction. — Michelle Obama

True listening is never self-effacement. We bring the whole self to the process, rather than denying self. When we truly listen, we aren't just waiting for someone else to decide something so we can get on with things, or so we don't have to decide for ourselves. We aren't giving away our own powers to be seen and heard. When we listen, first we listen to the parts of ourselves that are curious, in avoidance, afraid, angry, or proud. Then we can take a breath and sink, allowing those parts some space alongside the spaciousness of not knowing. — T. Thorn Coyle

When I bring to you coloured toys, my child, I understand why there is such a play of colours on clouds, on water, and why flowers are painted in tints
when I give coloured toys to you, my child.
When I sing to make you dance I truly now why there is music in leaves, and why waves send their chorus of voices to the heart of the listening earth
when I sing to make you dance.
When I bring sweet things to your greedy hands I know why there is honey in the cup of the flowers and why fruits are secretly filled with sweet juice
when I bring sweet things to your greedy hands.
When I kiss your face to make you smile, my darling, I surely understand what pleasure streams from the sky in morning light, and what delight that is that is which the summer breeze brings to my body
when I kiss you to make you smile. — Rabindranath Tagore

... she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and robbed of colour, she saw things truly ... Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested ... and so, giving herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking - one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a newspaper ... life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea. — Virginia Woolf