Listening Quotes and Proverbs

Sara Paddison, Hidden Power of the Heart
Deep heart listening and speaking your truth generates an exhilarating "heart talk" frequency. "Heart talk" is care in action and builds friendship. As you learn to see everyone as your friend, and not as an enemy, you release judgments. Just keep your heart open to them as you speak your truth.

African proverb
Much silence makes a powerful noise.

Unknown
Man who know little say much.
Man who know much say little.

Robert Greenleaf
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.

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

Fran Lebowitz
The opposite of talking is not listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

Native American
Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.

James Nathan Miller
There is no such thing as a worthless conversation, provided you know what to listen for. And questions are the breath of life for a conversation.

John Lahr
Accustomed to the veneer of noise, to the shibboleths of promotion, public relations, and market research, society is suspicious of those who value silence.

Every person in this life has something to teach me — and as soon as I accept that, I open myself to truly listening.
Thanks to Catherine Doucette

Brenda Ueland
Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life...When we listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other...and it is this little creative fountain inside us that begins to spring and cast up new thoughts and unexpected laughter and wisdom. ...Well, it is when people really listen to us, with quiet facinated attention, that the little fountain begins to work again, to accelerate in the most surprising way.

Oliver Wendell Holmes
It is the province of knowledge to speak And it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Paul Tillich
The first duty of love is to listen.

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

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

Wilson Mizner
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he knows something.

Edward H. Richards
The wise old owl lived in an oak;
The more he saw the less he spoke;
The less he spoke the more he heard:
Why can't we all be like that bird?

Unknown
Well done is better than well said.

Unknown
The time to stop talking is when the other person nods his head affirmatively but says nothing.

Unknown
When you are arguing with a fool, make sure he isn't doing the same thing.

Robert Greenleaf
Many attempts to communicate are nullified by saying too much.

Robert C. Murphy
To be listened to is, generally speaking, a nearly unique experience for most people. It is enormously stimulating. It is small wonder that people who have been demanding all their lives to be heard so often fall speechless when confronted with one who gravely agrees to lend an ear. Man clamors for the freedom to express himself and for knowing that he counts. But once offered these conditions, he becomes frigthened.

Wilson Mizner
A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.

Dr Joyce Brothers
Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.

Nancy Kerrigan
Doubt yourself and you doubt everything you see. Judge yourself and you see judges everywhere. But if you listen to the sound of your own voice, you can rise above doubt and judgment. And you can see forever.

A. A. Milne
If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.

D.J. Kaufman
Wisdom is the reward for a lifetime of listening ... when you'd have preferred to talk.

Josh Billings
The best time to hold your tongue is the time you feel you must say something or bust.

M. Scott Peck, MD
An essential part of true listening is the discipline of bracketing, the temporary giving up or setting aside of one's own prejudices, frames of reference and desires so as to experience as far as possible the speaker's world from the inside, step in inside his or her shoes. This unification of speaker and listener is actually and extension and enlargement of ourselves, and new knowledge is always gained from this. Moreover, since true listening involves bracketing, a setting aside of the self, it also temporarily involves a total acceptance of the other. Sensing this acceptance, the speaker will fell less and less vulnerable and more and more inclined to open up the inner recesses of his or her mind to the listener. As this happens, speaker and listener begin to appreciate each other more and more, and the duet dance of love is begun again.

Thoreau
It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear.