Quotes on Listening

The democratic youth lives along day by day, gratifying the desire that occurs to him, at one time drinking and listening to the flute, at another downing water and reducing, now practicing gymnastic, and again idling and neglecting everything; and sometimes spending his time as though he were occupied in philosophy.

By far the most important form of attention we can give our loved ones is listening... True listening is love in action.

You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.

Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.

My mum was a nurse, and her passion was geriatric care. I used to love listening to the old people's stories in her nursing home and picturing myself in their place. They'd say, 'I went to school in a horse and cart,' and I'd just think 'Wow!' I'd picture myself in their place - acting was a natural progression.

It is a mistake to assume that everyone listens like you do: your listening is as unique as your fingerprints, and so is everyone else's.

Conscious listening is very largely overlooked in the mainstream of education. It's such an important skill in life. And yet we expect children to pick it up from home or from peers informally.

We all like to look good. However, this basic human desire can often get in the way of our listening and our speaking. This tendency often evinces itself in two simple words: 'I know.' But if I know everything, what can I learn? Absolutely nothing.

Listening is a crucial aspect of democracy. Listening creates understanding, and understanding permits one of the most important things about every democracy, which is civilized disagreement.

When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from out friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, "What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?" "They are the days of a long time ago, Laura," Pa said. "Go to sleep, now." But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa's fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods,… She was glad that the cozy house, and Pa and Ma and the firelight and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

What I like doing best is Nothing." "How do you do Nothing," asked Pooh after he had wondered for a long time. "Well, it's when people call out at you just as you're going off to do it, 'What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say, 'Oh, Nothing,' and then you go and do it. It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering." "Oh!" said Pooh.

Divers alarums and excursions', she read, uncertainly. 'That means lots of terrible happenings, said Magrat. 'You always put that in plays.' Alarums and what?', said Nanny Ogg, who hadn't been listening. Excursions', said Magrat patienly. Oh.' Nanny Ogg brightened a bit. 'The seaside would be nice,' she said. Oh do shut up, Gytha,' said Granny Weatherwax. 'They're not for you. They're only for divers, like it says. Probably so they can recover from all them alarums.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

Everything in writing begins with language. Language begins with listening.

I don't know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you're losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.

Difficult as it is really to listen to someone in affliction, it is just as difficult for him to know that compassion is listening to him.

A love song must respect the canons of music beauty, entering the fibers of those who are listening. It must make them dream and pleasantly introduce them to the universe of love.

The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind.