“To meet at all, one must open ones eyes to another; and there is no true conversation no matter how many words are spoken, unless the eye, unveiled and listening, opens itself to the other.”
“When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely -- the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears- when you give your whole attention to it.”
“Listening to someone talk isn't at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.”
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it's an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
“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...A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”
“Letting a maximum number of views be heard regularly is not just a nice philosophical notion. It is the best way any society has yet discovered to detect maladjustments quickly, to correct injustices, and to discover new ways to meet our continuing stream of novel problems that rise in a changing environment.”
“Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand.”
“Much unhappiness comes from walking alone. When there are several, it's somewhat different. I must get into the habit of listening to others, for what the others say concerns me, too.”
Alfred Döblin (1878-1957);
German Expressionist Novelist
This Quote Was Our Daily Quote On: 02/18/11 “Great ideas...come into the world as gently as doves...if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar...a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. ”
This Quote Was Our Daily Quote On: 02/24/12 “Listen with an open heart and an open mind to those who love you the most. You may hear a grain of truth that will later become the foundation of your entire belief system. ”
Callie Khouri (born 1957);
Screenwriter; Academy Award Winner
This Quote Was Our Daily Quote On: 10/01/12 “When I feel lost and can't make a decision, I just stop and get quiet. I take a time-out. I ask myself, How does this feel? What do I want my life to be like? I try not to listen to the shoulds or coulds, and try to get beyond expectations, peer pressure, or trying to please- and just listen. I believe all the answers are ultimately within us.”
This Quote Was Our Daily Quote On: 12/03/12 “Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”