100 Quotes About Listening

Listening is one of the most important skills that we can develop, and it’s not something that comes naturally. Sometimes we take listening for granted; but when you think about it, it’s something that should be practiced every single day. If you’re not listening to other people, if you’re not actively listening to other people, chances are you’re not truly happy or fulfilled in your life. So take this opportunity to become a better listener and learn how to be more attentive to others.

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So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days, you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon’tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglass-I’veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a little bunch of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for the string. The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world’s first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.When the world grew bigger, and there wasn’t enough string to keep the things people wanted to say from disappearing into the vastness, the telephone was invented. Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a person’s silence. Nicole Krauss
Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a...
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Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening. Epictetus
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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
It takes two to speak the truth - one to...
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It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak and another to hear. Henry David Thoreau
Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening when...
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Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening when you would have preferred to talk. Doug Larson
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Our spirit wants to experience connection by being seen, felt and heard. When you ask and listen deeply with curiosity to whatever wants to be expressed, you are giving one of the most precious gifts you can give to one you love. Tracie Sage
For a woman's words to wound would require a man...
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For a woman's words to wound would require a man to listen first! Meredith Duran
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You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.. You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to. . Chaim Potok
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The ear favours no particular “point of view.” We are enveloped by sound. It forms a seamless web around us. We say, “Music shall fill the air.” We never say, “Music shall fill a particular segment of the air.” We hear sounds from everywhere, without ever having to focus. Sounds come from “above, ” from “below, ” from in “front” of us, from “behind” us, from our “right, ” from our “left.”We can‘t shut out sound automatically. We simply are not equipped with earlids. Where a visual space is an organised continuum of a uniformed connected kind, the ear world is a world of simultaneous relationships. Marshall McLuhan
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There is music the moment you start listening. Marty Rubin
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The voice of the Soul can be heard within the silence of the unaffected mind. Listen. Ka Chinery
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Prayer is actually setting out a tuning fork. All you can really do in the spiritual life is to get tuned to receive the always present message. Once you are tuned, you will receive, and it as nothing do to with worthiness or the group you belong to but only the inner resonance and a capacity for mutuality. The Sender is absolutely and always present and broadcasting; the only change is with the receiver station. . John Predmore
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Edward knew what it was like to say over and over again the names of those you had left behind. He knew what it was like to miss someone. And so he listened. And in his listening, his heart opened wide and then wider still. (page 103) Kate Dicamillo
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Also the air: the air is full of sighs and cries. These are never lost: if you listen carefully, with a sympathetic ear, you can hear them echoing forever within the second sphere. J.M. Coetzee
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The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Ralph G. Nichols
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Half the time you think your thinking you’re actually listening Terence McKenna
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...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others. Haruki Murakami
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I had been running as fast as I could for all of my adult life. A person can’t listen effectively while running. A running mother is not able to pick up clues. She is not able to let go of her own agenda long enough to stop and listen. Irene Tomkinson
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It is silent, an anagram for listen. That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent. Eric Jerome Dickey
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Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back. Ronald A. Heifetz
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One of the greatest skills any leader can master is becoming comfortable with silence. David Grossman
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From listening and silence can be learn a lot of, but these skills to be learn that's the hard and complicated work... Deyth Banger
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Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it. Gordon Hempton
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... listening to the silence together. If there’s any. I truly believe not so. I have never heard a silence. Have you? The world is filled with unspoken words. And that’s something different isn’t it. Anna Jae
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Chester's playing filled the station. Like ripples around a stone dropped into still water, the circles of silence spread out from the newsstand. And as people listened, a change came over their faces. Eyes that looked worried grew soft and peaceful; tongues left off chattering; and ears full of the city's rustling were rested by the cricket's melody. George Selden
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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
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The world is in sore need of good listeners. And in our own lives, it’s amazing to recognize just how valuable listening can be for us. How many mistakes have you made because you didn’t listen well? Personally, I’ve made many–and I’ve missed out on some wonderful opportunities because I was more interested in sharing what I had to say than I was in listening to what someone else had to say. Tom Walsh
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When I act tough they listen politely till the spasm passes. They know. Frank McCourt
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Pheoby's hungry listening helped Janie to tell her story. Zora Neale Hurston
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Everything that happens to us, everything that we say or hear, everything that we see with our own eyes or we articulate with our tongue, everything that enters through our ears, everything we are witness to (and for which we are therefore partially responsible) must find a recipient outside ourselves and we choose that recipient according to what happens, or what we are told or even according to what we ourselves say. Each thing must be told to someone–though not necessarily to the same person–and each thing will undergo a selection process, the way someone out shopping might scrutinize, set aside, and assess presents for the season to come. Everything must be told at least once, although..it must be told when the time is right, or, which comes to the same thing, at the right moment, and sometimes, if you fail to recognize that right moment or deliberately let it pass, there will never again be another. Unknown
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Writing, too, is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you wrote, it pours out of you. If you can capture that reality around you, your writing needs nothing else. You don't only listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. Listening is receptivity. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write. You can take in the way things are without judgment, and the next day you can write the truth about the way things are.".. If you can capture the way things are that's all the poetry you ever need. Natalie Goldberg
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A person’s voice can have such a powerful experience on the listener, very different from looking at the words on the page. Frank Beddor
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My parents are great listeners Which is why I never tell them anything Sonya Sones
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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. Ray Bradbury
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This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going. Sarah Dessen
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We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say. Zeno Of Citium
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Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking. Bernard M. Baruch
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There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing. G.k. Chesterton
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You're short on ears and long on mouth. John Wayne
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Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. Madeleine LEngle
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An appreciative listener is always stimulating. Agatha Christie
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When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening. Banana Yoshimoto
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We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less. Unknown
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You can't fake listening. It shows. Raquel Welch
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Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable. David Augsburger
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I never miss a good chance to shut up James Patterson
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Maybe you’re so good at listening that you have no idea when to speak.” ~Braeden S.M. Boyce
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People love to talk but hate to listen. Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer. Alice Duer Miller
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I care about who you are, who you have been, who you want to be. I open myself to you to listen and learn about you. I cherish you, not just my fantasy of who you are, not just who I need you to be, but who you really are... Betty Berzon
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There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too. Katherine Hannigan
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Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations."" How do you know? -- how can you guess all this, sir?"" I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary. Unknown
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Listening is a gift of spiritual significance that you can learn to give to others. When you listen, you give one a sense of importance, hope and love that he or she may not receive any other way. Through listening, we nurture and validate the feelings one has, especially when he or she experiences difficulties in life. H. Norman Wright
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I can't afford to say yes to all my staff's desires, but one thing is certain — I can't afford the outrageous cost of not listening to their requests. John Yokoyama
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She was like some kind of Energizer Bunny nonstop bitch machine... She needed three more husbands, so we could all take shifts listening to her. Victor Gischler
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The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words. Ronald A. Heifetz
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Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. it's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. Garth Stein
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Intrusive, thoughtless people! " said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers. Franz Kafka
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And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said." (page 69) Kate Dicamillo
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They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes. Unknown
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I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk. William Howard Taft
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I said very little. I knew that for the time being I was the open air, the place to put the words, not a real interlocutor. And then, ekthout a transition of any kind, she began to tell me. ... {p. 134} Siri Hustvedt
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His head was on one side, listening to me, and that was such sweeness to me, that he listened intently. No one, it seemed, has ever listened like he does. Sue Woolfe
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Sing your own song. There are always some earnest listeners. Amit Ray
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Our Victrola stood in the diningroom. I was allowed to climb onto the seat of a diningroom chair to wind it, start the record turning, and set the needle playing. In a second I'd jumped to the floor, to spin or march around the room as the music called for - now there were all the other records I could play too. I skinned back onto the chair just in time to lift the needle at the end, stop the record and turn it over, then change the needle. Winding up, dancing, being cocked to start and stop the record, was of course, all in one the act of listening. Movement must be at the very heart of listening. Eudora Welty
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His practice was to listen noncommittally with half his mind, while he allowed the other half to lose itself in utterly unrelated , often deeply lonely musings. From the speaker's perspective it was like sticking a lance into something again and again with no result... Yasushi Inoue
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When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say. Maggie Kuhn
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Something about you makes me feel like I can tell you things like that. You’re so still. It’s like, you’ll just hear it.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t even hear what I’m thinking most of the time, ” he said, his brow wrinkling. “My brain’s noisy. Jodi Lynn Anderson
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A good listener is a witness, not a judge of your experience. Michael P Nichols
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I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen to a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband. If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate we hardly listen to what is being said. In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention, a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate. . Jiddu Krishnamurti
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Tango is a truth drug. It lays bare your problems and your complexes, but also the strengths you hide from others so as not to vex them. It shows what a couple can be for each other, how they can listen to each other. People who only want to listen to themselves will hate tango. Nina George
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The cliché is true: People don't care what we know until they know we care. Rick Warren
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When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening any more. Florence Griffith Joyner
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When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. The writers I like best are those who attend. Kathleen Jamie
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I could feel something that I hadn’t felt for a long time. Something quiet and difficult to spot, but it was the feeling that you get when someone is listening to you. Really listening carefully. And it makes you want to tell things exactly the right way. It makes you want to take your time and explain, and get it right. Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
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When people speak, listen carefully and pay particular attention to what they are not saying. Wayne Gerard Trotman
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Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk. Doug Larson
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You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Harper Lee
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Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you. Anonymous
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Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening that talking. Bernard Baruch
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There is a difference between truly listening and waiting for your turn to talk. Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The best listener is the one who really cares about the other person. Kevin Stirtz
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Learning to listen relationally, listen with cool heads and clear boundaries, listen with the quietness of the heart and the gentleness of the body, means having a self so developed it can afford to yield. Terrence Real
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Listening isn't just about being quiet. It's about listening to -What is Said, What is Unsaid, and What is meant With your Eyes, Ears and Heart Wordions
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She was as bored as her brother would have been, and had not his gift of listening beneath words. E.m. Forster
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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
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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
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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
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People don't only speak with their mouths. They speak with their whole being. Sometimes they mean what they don't say and say what they don't mean; so listen with your whole being also. Let your whole being connect to theirs. Do not only listen to their voice, but also to their body language and their emotions. Listen with your ears and your heart. Bangambiki Habyarimana
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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
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Listening is the key. The whole objective of a howl is to be heard. Amit Pandey
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More than anything else, your people want you to listen to them. Sunday Adelaja
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The person you're most afraid to contradict is yourself. Nassim Taleb
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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
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Sometimes you are not supposed to say anything. Just listen. Let the other person spit it out. RD
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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
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It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself. Barbara Kingsolver
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You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts. Tommy Smothers
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When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening. Carl R. Rogers
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We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening. Marcel Proust
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Surround yourself with music. Just be sure to turn the radio on. Lisa M. Cronkhite