quotations and passages on listening

One who cares is one who listens.

J. Richard Clarke

I spent most of my life waiting for my turn to speak. If you’re at all like me,
you’ll be pleasantly amazed at the softer reactions and looks of surprise as
you let others completely finish their thought before you begin yours. Often,
you will be allowing someone to feel listened to for the first time. You will
sense a feeling of relief coming from the person to whom you are speaking—
and a much calmer, less rushed feeling between the two of you. No need to
worry that you won’t get your turn to speak—you will. In fact, it will be more
rewarding to speak because the person you are speaking to will pick up on
your respect and patience and will begin to do the same.

Richard Carlson

We begin our lives listening to the many sounds surrounding us in the womb. When
we are dying, the last faculty to shut down is usually hearing. In between, there is
so much to see that we seldom take the time to cultivate the art of listening. Listening
uses other practices: attention, being present, openness. It is holy work, involving in
the inventive phrase of W.A. Mathieu, a Sufi musician, "making an altar out of our ears."

Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

God speaks to us every day
only we don't know how to listen.

Mahatma Gandhi

The older I grow, the more I listen
to people who don't talk much.

Germain G. Glidden

Friends are those rare people who ask how
we are and then wait to hear the answer.

Ed Cunningham

Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing.
It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of
our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in
the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention
an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for
the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied,
unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.

In this culture the soul and the heart too often go homeless.

Listening creates a holy silence. When you listen generously to people,
they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. And in
the silence of listening, you can know yourself in everyone. Eventually
you may be able to hear, in everyone and beyond everyone,
the unseen singing softly to itself and to you.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Really listening and suspending one's own judgment is necessary
in order to understand other people on their own terms. As we
have noted, this is a process that requires trust and builds trust.

Mary Field Belenky

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.

Alice Deur Miller

All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small
or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us
to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being.
But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.

Paul Tillich

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

Joyce Brothers

The golden rule of friendship is to listen to
others as you would have them listen to you.

David Augsburger

You can hear your loved ones no matter how poorly your ears work. I know deaf people who are able to hear with their hearts. And I know people with perfect ears who drive their families crazy with their lack of hearing. I know about this firsthand because our children used to get upset when I read the paper and watched television while they were talking to me. They'd say, "Dad, you're not listening." I would repeat all the things they said to prove I was listening, but they told me that being able to repeat their words was not the same thing as hearing them. Hearing means listening attentively to what they had to say. Today when one of the children wants to talk to me, I put down the paper, turn off the television and listen to what he has to tell me. . . . I also have learned how to say "m-m-m" in many ways and to stop trying to solve everyone's problems. They thank me for listening. It helps them to clarify and solve their problems.

Bernie Siegel

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

Doug Larson

Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone's tale of woe
and not respond with a description of your own.

Andrew V. Mason

The greatest gift you can give another
is the purity of your attention.

Richard Moss

I may be ineffective in my interactions with my work associates,
my spouse, or my children because I constantly tell them what I think,
but I never really listen to them. Unless I search out correct principles
of human interaction, I may not even know I need to listen. Even if I
do know that in order to interact effectively with others I really need
to listen to them, I may not have the skill. I may not know how
to really listen deeply to another human being. But knowing I need
to listen and knowing how to listen is not enough. Unless I want
to listen, unless I have the desire, it won't be a habit in my life.

Stephen R. Covey

The first duty of love is to listen.

Paul Tillich

Listen, or your tongue will keep you deaf.

Native North American proverb

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The learned person who only talks will never
Penetrate to the inner heart of humans.

Idries Shah

Creative Listening
Wilferd A. Peterson

One of the most important habits of a creative thinker is to be a good listener. Stand guard at the ear-gateway to your mind, heart, and spirit.

Listen to the good. Tune your ears to love, hope, and courage. Tune out gossip and resentment.

Listen to the beautiful. Listen to the music of the masters. Listen to the symphony of nature--the hum of the wind in the treetops, bird songs, thundering surf. . .

Listen critically. Mentally challenge assertions, ideas, and philosophies. Seek the truth with an open mind.

Listen with patience. Do not hurry the other person. Show them the courtesy of listening to what they have to say, no matter how much you may disagree. You may learn something.

Listen with your heart. Practice empathy when you listen. Put yourself in the other person's shoes.

Listen for growth. Be an inquisitive listener. Ask questions. Everyone has something to say which will help you to grow.

Listen creatively. Listen for ideas or the germs of ideas. Listen for hints or clues that may spark creative projects.

Listen to yourself. Listen to your deepest yearnings, your highest aspirations, your noblest impulses. Listen to the better person within you.

Listen with depth. Be still and listen. Listen with the ear of intuition to the inspiration of the Infinite.

For 25 years, Wilferd A. Peterson
wrote a series of stimulating essays,
The Creative Adventure, for Science
of Mind Magazine. He lovingly
compiled this volume of his
favorite and most-requested
pieces (including several new
ones). His writings will stir your
own originality and demonstrate
that the creative potentials which
we carry within each of us are
truly unique and endless.

Articles and book excerpts on listening:

Faith and Experience      Iyanla Vanzant
Just Listen      Rachel Naomi Remen
Have You Stopped to Listen Today?      tom walsh
Listen Closely. . . .      tom walsh
Listen While You Speak      Louise Morganti Kaelin

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another
person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever
give each other is our attention. And especially if it's given from the heart.
When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them.
Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most
times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most
of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this. It has taken
me a long time to believe in the power of simply saying, "I'm so sorry,"
when someone is in pain. And meaning it.
One of my patients told me that when she tried to tell her story people
often interrupted to tell her that they once had something just like that happen
to them. Subtly her pain became a story about themselves. Eventually she
stopped talking to most people. It was just too lonely. We connect through
listening. When we interrupt what someone is saying to let them know that
we understand, we move the focus of attention to ourselves. When we listen,
they know we care. Many people with cancer talk about
the relief of having someone just listen.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Lawyers have a saying about conferences between legal opponents: "The side
doing the talking is losing," For the longest time I thought that the test of my value
was what I had to say. When I wasn't talking, I did listen to others, but with half
my mind figuring out what I'd say next. It's as though I had been listening to music
and just registering the melody but not hearing the harmony, the instruments,
the subtleties of phrasing. To really listen takes active attention. To have listened
and absorbed the whole message, with all its connotations, its unspoken and
maybe unintended shadings, makes it likelier that when you do speak,
you will contribute more, and do so with fewer words.

John Walsh

And with listening, too, it seems to me, it is not the ear that hears, it is
not the physical organ that performs the act of inner receptivity. It is the
total person who hears. Sometimes the skin seems to be the best listener,
as it prickles and thrills, say to a sound or a silence; or the fantasy, the
imagination: how it bursts into inner pictures as it listens and then responds
by pressing its language, its forms, into the listening clay. To be open to
what we hear, to be open in what we say. . . .

M.C. Richards

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

M. Scott Peck

There is a silence that matches our best possibilities when
we have learned to listen to others. We can master the art
of being quiet in order to be able to hear clearly what others
are saying. . . . We need to cut off the garbled static of our
own preoccupations to give to people who want our quiet attention.

Eugene Kennedy

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