A Listening Heart Quotes

Give me the gift of a listening heart. ~ Solomon

Any place is sacred ground, for it can become a place of encounter with the divine Presence. ~ David Steindl-Rast

A listening heart can take away stress. A loving and friendly hug can heal and bless. ~ Debasish Mridha

Eyes see only light, ears hear only sound, but a listening heart perceives meaning. ~ David Steindl-Rast

That's what being a mother is, isn't it? Waiting for a rounded belly to tighten in readiness; listening for the sound of hunger in the moonlit hours; hearing an eager voice call even in the camouflage of traffic, loud music, and whirring machines. It's looking at every door, every phone, and every approaching silhouette and feeling that slight lift, that tickle of opportunity to be again - mother. ~ Nadia Hashimi

Bob Erlendson, a local piano player, taught me chord structure and which scales go along with them. Later, I began listening to [pianists] Bill Evans and McCoy Tyner. Then I got interested in [saxophonist] John Coltrane. ~ Lenny Breau

What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling ... In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176) ~ Studs Terkel

It is true that private friends have sometimes, after listening to my effusions, gone the length of remarking, "Really, Smith, that's not half bad!" or, "You take my advice, old boy, and send that to some magazine!" but I have never on these occasions had the moral courage to inform my adviser that the article in question had been sent to well-nigh every publisher in London, and had come back again with a rapidity and precision which spoke well for the efficiency of our postal arrangements. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

[Listening to a song] one could experience a freedom from one's physical body, and from one's social body - the mask you wore to go about in public among those who thought they knew you, an unchosen mask of nervousness and tradition, the mask that, when owrn too long, makes the face behind it shrivel up and rot away. For some, a spinning record opened up the possibility that one might say anything, in any voice, with any face, the singer's mask now a sign of mystery. ~ Greil Marcus

Even from a listening end now, I'm still completely a fan of music. ~ James Iha

When a fruit salad, a lover, or a jazz trio is just too imperfect for our tastes, we stop eating, kissing, and listening. But the law of large numbers suggests that when a measurement is too imperfect for our tastes, we should not stop measuring. Quite the opposite - we should measure again and again until niggling imperfections yield to the onslaught of data. ~ Daniel M. Gilbert

Rambling among woods and meadows, I could 'take sweet counsel' with the country-side; sitting on a grassy bank and lifting my face to the sun, I could feel an intensity of thankfulness such as I'd never known before the War; listening to the little brook that bubbled out of a copse and across a rushy field, I could discard my personal relationship with the military machine and its ant-like armies. On ~ Siegfried Sassoon

I was Prince Charming's sister. You know---a real princess. Not through marriage, but by birthright. And---hold on. Are you listening? This is important---So. Are. You. ~ Julie C. Donaldson

The experiences, the lessons, and the defeats,
They were all necessary for me to be me,
took me a while being blind before i could see,
had to crawl on my knees before i stood on my feet,
once i stood on my feet i found out i had wings,
the flight is amazing, i felt like a king,
and when no one is listening, i found out i can sing,
what happy times and thoughts does it bring,
whatever it takes just make sure you are free,
free to live, and grow like a tree,
The people you love are the branches you need,
its not about the type, the color, or breed,
Live life with ambition, ambition indeed,
Thats what it took, and thats what i need. ~ Michael Perez

Have you ever watched people when they don't know you're watching them? Like in a movie theater or a concert. When people get caught up in watching something, their faces change. The lines on their faces get softer, because whatever they're watching has made them forget how they think they're supposed to be looking. Instead, they just ARE - just sitting there, listening and watching and being real. ~ Claire Legrand

We have to be in a listening mode: it is about dialogue, about listening to what the others have to say, about cooperating in the best way possible. These are the values and principles that we put forward. ~ Pierre Vimont

Why do want to find him so bad?' I ask after a while, but she's not listening. I watch her a bit
longer. 'Why do you want to find him so bad?' I ask again.
She blinks and comes out of her dream. She flicks the band on her wrist. 'I just do.' - Ed Skye ~ Cath Crowley

I trust the mystery. I trust what comes in silence and what comes in nature where there's no diversion. I think the lack of stimulation allows us to hear and experience a deeper river that's constant, still, vibrant, and real. And the process of deep listening with attention and intention catalyzes and mobilizes exactly what's needed at that time. ~ Angeles Arrien

A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away-away-to an indefinite distance-it died. The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept. ~ Charlotte Bronte

What is inadmissible, both morally and scientifically, is the hubris that pretends to understand the behavior of human agents without for a moment listening systematically to how they understand what they are doing and how they explain themselves. ~ James C. Scott

I don't know much about contemporary music. I do have an iPod but I listen to a lot of old blues. I listen to John Lee Hooker and Elmore James. I have been listening to them for years. I was obsessed with Van Morrison for years. I went to see him recently where he performed Astral Weeks. I just spent the entire night crying, but I was really obsessed with Van Morrison. ~ Robert Pattinson

I've heard bombs going off in our embassies, mobs screaming for blood, mullahs issuing death decrees, so-called leaders yelling for jihad. They've been burning books, Dave - the temperature of hate in parts of the Islamic world has gone out to Pluto. And I've been listening to them." "And you don't think we have - the people in Washington?" He said it without anger. I was at one time a leading intelligence agent and I think he genuinely wanted to know. "Maybe in your heads. Not in your gut." He turned and looked out the window. It was starting to rain. He was quiet for a long time and I began to wonder if his blood pressure had taken off again. "I think you're right," he said at last. "I think, like the Jews, we believed in the fundamental goodness of men; we never thought it could really happen. ~ Terry Hayes

I find it quite difficult to think that there's, you know, about 20 million people listening to my album that I wrote very selfishly to get over a breakup. I didn't write it being that it's going to be a hit. ~ Adele

Eager, perhaps, to repay the favor of listening, Sylvia nodded with encouragement. But suddenly she reminded Enid of Katharine Hepburn. In Hepburn's eyes there had been a blank unconsciousness of privilege that made a once-poor woman like Enid want to kick her patrician shins with the hardest-toed pumps at her disposal. It would be a mistake, she felt, to confess anything to this woman. ~ Jonathan Franzen

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level. ~ Kiefer Sutherland

I grew up listening to hits, and if I write something I feel, I think that's pretty mass appeal. I'm not very elitist with music. Love is universal; a great melody is universal; it goes around the world; it's not just American. A great song can touch the world. ~ Diane Warren

If you don't listen deeply, the connection won't take place ... [You have to be] willing to be changed by the person you're listening to, where you're not just waiting for a pause so you can say your thing, but you're actually letting them have an effect on you if they can. ~ Alan Alda

I had ideas about music and sound and listening and time and so on that I wanted to pursue as an individual, and by doing that book, Brian [Eno] opened the door, and he decided to do a record based loosely on the book. ~ David Toop

The most important thing for the conductor is that he or she listens. Her listening will make things sound a certain way. If the conductor listens well, the musicians listen each other better. The conductor can in effect impose a certain kind of listening for everybody. ~ Laurence Equilbey

Don't ever get to the point where you can't be taught because life is a classroom and everyone owns a pen. ~ Shannon L. Alder

You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'

I said it.'

No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'

Well, give me time.'

Please.'

He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.

Aren't you going to, Clyde?'

He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'

I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'

Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'

You disgust me,' she said.

Listen to her! She's sore!'

A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good. ~ Truman Capote

I'm just a core, a kernel, a coal tucked in a bit of breathing flesh, listening to the rain. My life fills this place, no longer meager, no longer lost or stolen or waiting to begin. I drink rain and it quenches an ancient thirst. ~ Jean Hegland

Rather than listening to a person with a louder voice. Empower yourself by listening to your inner voice. ~ Brian Michael Good

Paradoxically, admitting your own powerlessness can free you from the need to fix everything and allow us to be truly present to the other person, and to listen. A cartoon in The New Yorker had one woman saying testily to her friend, 'There's no point in our being friends if you won't let me fix you. ~ James Martin

Way back in the day, when I first started and had delusions of adequacy as a cartoonist, I would listen to music. When I switched to a career as a writer, I would try to listen to music, but if the songs had lyrics they would get in the way of the words I was trying to write. So I switched to listening to purely instrumental pieces. ~ Alan Moore

The Council of American Builders met once a month and engaged in no tangible activity beyond listening to speeches and sipping an inferior brand of root beer. Its membership did not grow fast in quantity or quality. There were no concrete results achieved. ~ Ayn Rand

Q: I don't really know what it means to live beautifully. In fact, I really know nothing except a few mechanical things connected with my job; I see by talking to you that my life is pretty dull, or rather my mind is. So how can I wake up to this sensitivity, to this intelligence that makes life extremely beautiful to you?

Krishnamurti: First one has to sharpen the senses by looking, touching, observing, listening not only to the birds, to the rustle of the leaves, but also to the words that you use yourself, the feeling you have – however small and petty – for all the secret intimations of your own mind. Listen to them and don't suppress them, don't control them or try to sublimate them. Just listen to them. The sensitivity to the senses doesn't mean their indulgence, doesn't mean yielding to urges or resisting those urges, but means simply observing so that the mind is always watchful as when you walk on a railway line; you may lose your balance but you immediately get back on to the rail. So the whole organism becomes alive, sensitive, intelligent, balanced, taut. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

I have a word problem for you." "I'm listening" "If Naz forgoes sleep, and Karissa gets naked, how many orgasms can he give her before sun up? ~ J.M. Darhower

It really was a whole generation who were listening to Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, James Moody, Fats Navarro and, a little bit later on, Mongo Santamaría and Chuck Berry, and these dozen or so guys gave them a voice. They led the way. They wrote what a whole generation wanted to read. The time was right and they seized the day by writing about their lives. They travelled, they got into scrapes, they got arrested, they got wasted … and they wrote about it.

Isn't that something? ~ Karl Wiggins

Oh man, I love what the South brings as far as the soul, and I really have noticed from even the early days of listening to OutKast and Goodie Mob that Atlanta and the South has a diverse sound to it. You have bounce music. You have soulful musicians. You have artists with vocals who try to do different things. ~ Common

I think in the modern world we really need to have movie theaters or places we can go in and rejuvenate ourselves. I think we'll have less problems with our souls and our health. I do that in my life, and I feel healthy and happy. I need those hours in the darkness where I used to spend time as a kid, sitting in a little closet in the darkness, listening to AM radio, having glowing paint that I illuminated, just sitting there, dreaming about anything, not being disturbed for an hour or two, just alone in the dark. I'm still that little boy in my brain. ~ Peter Stormare

We lay there in the dark listening to Emili Sande's voice. And when the song ended, it seemed that the world had gone completely silent. Then I heard Sam's voice in the dark. "So you'll be my river, Sally?" She was crying again. "Yeah," I said. "'I would do all the running for you.'" I would have sung her the whole song, but I have a not-so-great singing voice. "And you'll move the mountains just for me?" "Yeah," I whispered. And then I was crying too. Not out-of-control crying, but crying. Soft, like it was coming from a place inside me that was quiet and soft too, and that was better than the hard place inside me when I made a fist, or wanted to make one. Maybe the river was made of our tears. Mine and Sam's. Maybe the river was made of everybody's tears. Everybody who had ever lost anybody. All those tears. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

Social media is like a zillion radios all playing at the same time...... but who is listening? ~ D.M. Jarrett

He and I had been talking about jazz (which is to say that he had been talking about jazz, and I had been listening to him talk about jazz, because that is how you talk to a man about jazz)... ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

After listening to "Machine Gun" I have to take a nap. ~ Lenny Kravitz

I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them. ~ J.K. Simmons

They caught the sound of footfalls at the same moment, and both stood as a tall figure ran toward them, his blade in hand.

"Stop there, traitor," Sabre said, raising her sling. "Or I'll fell you before you take another step."

"The advantage of a missile weapon," Moria said.

"Exactly. And it appears he has enough experience with yours to respect mine."

"No, he'll only pretend he's listening, as he talks and distracts, and then creeps close enough to use his sword."

"I can hear you," Gavril called.

"Good," Moria said. "Then you can hear that I'm not under any duress, and you can presume that if our visitor was helping me escape, we'd be gone by now, not chatting like girls at a tea ceremony. Since I know you'll not stay where you are, you may approach half the distance, then lay down your sword and come closer."

"May I?"

"Only if you behave. And keep quiet. Otherwise, stay where you are."

"I think you forget who is - "

" - in charge here? No, Kitsune, I do not. I am in charge, because if you do not return with me, you will pay the price. That is why you've accommodated me so far and it's why you'll continue to do so now."

Sabre chuckled. Gavril stalked closer. ~ Kelley Armstrong

I was first influenced by a friend in fifth grade when he brought a Walkman to school and was listening to 'Paradise City' by Guns 'N Roses, which he had concealed within his hoodie. He put the headphones over my ears and I was completely blown away by what I heard. I'll never forget that. ~ Darren Robinson

Speaking is known as the articulated vocalization of thought by means of the organs of speech. But speaking is at the same time also listening. It is the custom to put speaking and listening in opposition: one man speaks, the other listens. But listening accompanies and surrounds not only speaking such as takes place in conversation. The simultaneousness of speaking and listening has a larger meaning. Speaking is of itself a listening. Speaking is listening to the language which we speak. Thus, it is a listening not while but before we are speaking. This listening to language also comes before all other kinds of listening that we know, in a most inconspicuous manner. We do not merely speak the language - we speak by way of it. We can do so solely because we always have already listened to the language. What do we hear there? We hear language speaking. ~ Martin Heidegger

Look, dude, you've sampled your life, mixed those sounds with a funk precedent, and established a sixteen-bar system of government for the entire rhythm nation. Set the Dj up as the executive, the legislative, and judicial branches. I mean, after listening to your beat, anything I've heard on the pop radio in the last five years feels like a violation of my civil rights. ~ Paul Beatty

The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a train of suitors on her heels. For two years she saw suitors almost every evening. Except two they were all alike. They talked to her of passion and there was a strained eager quality in their voices and in their eyes when they looked at her. The two who were different were much unlike each other. One of them, a slender young man with white hands, the son of a jeweler in Winesburg, talked continually of virginity. When he was with her he was never off the subject. The other, a black-haired boy with large ears, said nothing at all but always managed to get her into the darkness, where he began to kiss her.

For a time the tall dark girl thought she would marry the jeweler's son. For hours she sat in silence listening as he talked to her and then she began to be afraid of something. Beneath his talk of virginity she began to think there was a lust greater than in all the others. At times it seemed to her that as he talked he was holding her body in his hands. She imagined him turning it slowly about in the white hands and staring at it. At night she dreamed that he had bitten into her body and that his jaws were dripping. She had the dream three times, then she became in the family way to the one who said nothing at all but who in the moment of his passion actually did bite her shoulder so that for days the marks of his teeth showed. ~ Sherwood Anderson

I often learn more about myself from listening to the life story of a friend than I do reflecting on my own story. ~ Donald Miller

Love and sex with a man is like listening to a soloist. Pleasant, sometimes beautiful and moving. But with a woman." She was wistful. "It is a symphony of sound and colour. You cannot help be swept up in it. ~ Clare Ashton