c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
I think it's nice for stars to do interviews to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it's all a big lie. The problem is I don't know who's lying.
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
People don't follow ordinary people
—  they follow extraordinary people.
I’m famous. Ain’t that a bitch?
— Thelonious Monk
I had lunch with my brothers,” Mark said, his face serious. “While you were still asleep. They told me. About Corey and that stupid set-up you agreed to where you’d pretend not to be my wife . . .”“I never agreed to pretend not to be your wife,” Dylan said.Mark’s face grew serious then. “That’s what it amounted to in the end though, didn’t it? You pulled away from me in exchange for me getting . . . what?”“Your career back,” Dylan said. “Your li
— Nia Forrester, The Seduction of Dylan Acosta
I nodded, unsure if Ted sounded admiring or angry. 'I waded in but I couldn't find him. I mean, is it possible - the water wasn't deep enough for him to drown. It doesn't make any sense.''My band made four brilliant albums and never had a single goddamn hit. We were supposed to be the American Rolling Stones, and we couldn't get more than five minutes of airplay. Does that make sense?' Ted stubbed out his cigarette.
— Elizabeth Hand, Radiant Days
He came face-to-face with the rude paradox fame had dealt him: The secret of his extraordinary art had been his ability to observe human interaction anonymously, thereby gaining insight into the emotions on display in ordinary life--it was his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall that made him famous, and fame had destroyed his ability to become a fly-on-the-wall.
— C.R. Strahan, Tango's Mirror
Missing what most of the time? The babbling faceless agora, the fame, the parties, the pop of flash bulbs? The lovers, the gaiety, the champagne? The solitude carved out of celebrity, poring over charts by a single lamp on a wide desk in a venerable hotel? Room service, coffee before dawn? The company of one friend, two? The choice: All of it or not? Some or none? Now, not now, maybe later?
— Peter Heller, The Dog Stars
That anyone would want to be famous still mystified Colin. As TV had trained him to do, he associated the word with divorces and court appearances and rehab and jail time. He knew more than he wanted about all of those except rehab, and that was the one famous people blew off anyway.
— Harry Turtledove, Eruption
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand
—  they listen with the intent to reply.
This is the problem with dealing with someone who is actually a good listener. They don’t jump in on your sentences, saving you from actually finishing them, or talk over you, allowing what you do manage to get out to be lost or altered in transit. Instead, they wait, so you have to keep going.
— Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.
— Zeno of Citium
Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening than talking.
— Bernard M. Baruch
I've learned to get really good at this - say one thing when I'm thinking about something else, act like I'm listening when I'm not, pretend to be calm and happy when I'm really freaking out. It's one of the skills you perfect as you get older
— Lauren Oliver, Delirium
There's a lot of difference between listening and hearing.
— G.K. Chesterton
You're short on ears and long on mouth.
— John Wayne
We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind.
— Madeleine L'Engle, Swiftly Tilting Planet
You cannot truly listen to anyone and do anything else at the same time.
— M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth
An appreciative listener is always stimulating.
— Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles
When someone tells you something big, it's like you're taking money from them, and there's no way it will ever go back to being the way it was. You have to take responsibility for listening.
— Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.
— Diogenes Laërtius
When we fear what other people think about us, we are frequently more focused on 'being interesting' and less focused on 'taking an interest.' That's why many people talk a great deal when they are anxious and why many people never feel heard. If both people and conversation are trying to be interesting, there is no one left to genuinely listen.
— John Yokoyama, When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market
You may see all that is around youBut you may feel nothing at all.So try and close your eyes so tightAnd listen to the night time fall.
— Stephen Cosgrove, Kartusch
The chronic kicker, even the most violent critic, will frequently soften and be subdued in the presence of a patient, sympathetic listener— a listener who will be silent while the irate fault-finder dilates like a king cobra and spews the poison out of his system.
— Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
You can't fake listening. It shows.
— Raquel Welch
Being heard is so close to being loved that for the average person, they are almost indistinguishable.
— David Augsburger
I stopped hating and started just being. My whole life, I had been the most defensive person you'd meet, unable to tolerate any criticism. But now I started listening and being.
— Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue
I never miss a good chance to shut up
— James Patterson, Along Came a Spider
Maybe you’re so good at listening that you have no idea when to speak.” ~Braeden
— S.M. Boyce, Lichgates
People love to talk but hate to listen. 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. You can listen like a blank wall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer.
— Alice Duer Miller
I care about who you are, who you have been, who you want to be. I open myself to you to listen and learn about you. I cherish you, not just my fantasy of who you are, not just who I need you to be, but who you really are...
— Betty Berzon
There's more than one way to tell each other things, and there's more than one way to listen, too.
— Katherine Hannigan, Ida B. . . and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster, and (Possibly) Save the World
Intermittently she caught the gist of his sentences and supplied the rest from her subconscious, as one picks up the striking of a clock in the middle with only the rhythm of the first uncounted strokes lingering in the mind.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the Night
Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.""How do you know? -- how can you guess all this, sir?""I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Listening is a gift of spiritual significance that you can learn to give to others. When you listen, you give one a sense of importance, hope and love that he or she may not receive any other way. Through listening, we nurture and validate the feelings one has, especially when he or she experiences difficulties in life.
— H. Norman Wright
You listen to people so that you can imagine them, and you hear all the terrible and wonderful things people do to themselves and to one another, but in the end the listening exposes you even more than it exposes the people you’re trying to listen to.
— John Green, Paper Towns
I can't afford to say yes to all my staff's desires, but one thing is certain – I can't afford the outrageous cost of not listening to their requests.
— John Yokoyama, When Fish Fly: Lessons for Creating a Vital and Energized Workplace from the World Famous Pike Place Fish Market
She was like some kind of Energizer Bunny nonstop bitch machine...She needed three more husbands, so we could all take shifts listening to her.
— Victor Gischler, The Deputy
The activity of interpreting might be understood as listening for the 'song beneath the words.
— Ronald A. Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. it's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
— Emily Post
Intrusive, thoughtless people!" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may have agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the corner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been listening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed to be comparing the length of his fingers.
— Franz Kafka, The Trial
And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said." (page 69)
— Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
They praised his modesty and did not listen to him, for listening is a rare gift, and men will have their heroes.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Earthsea Trilogy
I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk. 
— William Howard Taft
I said very little. I knew that for the time being I was the open air, the place to put the words, not a real interlocutor. And then, ekthout a transition of any kind, she began to tell me .... {p. 134}
— Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men
His head was on one side, listening to me, and that was such sweeness to me, that he listened intently. No one, it seemed, has ever listened like he does.
— Sue Woolfe, The Secret Cure
You must endeavor to seem interested in the conversations of others
—  you'll be surprised by what you might learn.
Sing your own song. There are always some earnest listeners.
— Amit Ray, Walking the Path of Compassion
What advantage has the person who will not listen over the one who cannot hear?
— Joyce Rachelle
Our Victrola stood in the diningroom. I was allowed to climb onto the seat of a diningroom chair to wind it, start the record turning, and set the needle playing. In a second I'd jumped to the floor, to spin or march around the room as the music called for - now there were all the other records I could play too. I skinned back onto the chair just in time to lift the needle at the end, stop the record and turn it over, then change the needle. Winding up, dancing, being cocked to start and stop the record, was of course, all in one the act of listening. Movement must be at the very heart of listening.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
Listening is two part, attention and thinking. The latter is what a lot of us don't do
— Hadi Farnoud
His practice was to listen noncommittally with half his mind, while he allowed the other half to lose itself in utterly unrelated , often deeply lonely musings. From the speaker's perspective it was like sticking a lance into something again and again with no result...
— Yasushi Inoue
When you least expect it, someone may actually listen to what you have to say.
— Maggie Kuhn
Something about you makes me feel like I can tell you things like that. You’re so still. It’s like, you’ll just hear it.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t even hear what I’m thinking most of the time,” he said, his brow wrinkling. “My brain’s noisy.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
A few years ago, a taxi driver told me about a club & a dog. A waiter spoke to me about ladders today. Life is full of lessons for those who listen.
— Indeewara Jayawardane
Listening isn't just about being quiet. It's about listening to what is said, what is unsaid, and what is meant with your eyes, ears and heart.
— Drishti Bablani, Wordions
So even though Grandpa's life has closed its final chapter, the story that he embodied continues each time we take a handful of dirt to check moisture levels or turn our head at the sound of the wind shifting directions before a storm. It lives on as we give thanks for the abundance that we have, whatever it looks like. It lives on in every decision we make that puts someone else first.
— Heidi Barr, Prairie Grown: Stories and Recipes from a South Dakota Hillside
A good listener is a witness, not a judge of your experience.
— Michael P Nichols, The Lost Art of Listening, Second Edition: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships
[Hearing] was distinct from listening, which could only be achieved when hearing was combined with giving a shit.
— Jon Stewart
I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen to a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband. If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate we hardly listen to what is being said. In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention, a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Tango is a truth drug. It lays bare your problems and your complexes, but also the strengths you hide from others so as not to vex them. It shows what a couple can be for each other, how they can listen to each other. People who only want to listen to themselves will hate tango.
— Nina George, The Little Paris Bookshop
Selective listening is more poisonous than the snake bite.Either you listen or you don't listen. Choice is yours!!!
— Santosh Adbhut Kumar
The cliché is true: People don't care what we know until they know we care.
— Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
When anyone tells me I can’t do anything, I’m just not listening any more.
— Florence Griffith Joyner
He kept telling and I kept repeating “I Know” sometimes people doesn’t need answers, they just need you to hear them what they say, make them that they are heard, Vijay was like that, he doesn’t need any one sympathizing to him, he just needed people to listen to him.
— Shaikh Ashraf, Friendship, Love & Sacrifice
When we were young, we were told that poetry is about voice, about finding a voice and speaking with this voice, but the older I get I think it’s not about voice, it’s about listening and the art of listening, listening with attention. I don’t just mean with the ear; bringing the quality of attention to the world. The writers I like best are those who attend.
— Kathleen Jamie
I could feel something that I hadn’t felt for a long time. Something quiet and difficult to spot, but it was the feeling that you get when someone is listening to you. Really listening carefully. And it makes you want to tell things exactly the right way. It makes you want to take your time and explain, and get it right.
— Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope
Listen should be on 60-70% and talking or speaking on from 40 up to 30%.
— Deyth Banger
Don’t ask a yes or no question unless the person being asked can say no without hesitation.
— Clifford Cohen
When people speak, listen carefully and pay particular attention to what they are not saying.
— Wayne Gerard Trotman
Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.
— Doug Larson
You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.
— Harper Lee
Good listeners, like precious gems, are to be treasured.
— Walter Anderson
If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.
— Turkish Proverbs
Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.
— Joyce Brothers
Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you. Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.
— Anonymous
True wisdom listens more, talks less, and can get along with all types of people.
— Kiana Tom
Listening is being able to be changed by the other person.
— Alan Alda
Most of the successful people I’ve known are the ones who do more listening that talking.
— Bernard Baruch
There is a difference between truly listening and waiting for your turn to talk.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
The art of conversation lies in listening.
— Malcom Forbes
The best listener is the one who really cares about the other person.
— Kevin Stirtz, More Loyal Customers: 21 Real World Lessons to Keep Your Customers Coming Back
Learning to listen relationally, listen with cool heads and clear boundaries, listen with the quietness of the heart and the gentleness of the body, means having a self so developed it can afford to yield.
— Terrence Real, How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women
Just by listening without looking I can tell you is it a white man singing or black.... as far as now is easy!
— Deyth Banger
Oscar’s hobby was saving people. He used to save people all the time, and fix things that were broken and catch people when they were falling. It wasn’t a skill you’d immediately know about or notice. Stevie said that Oscar had a gift and the gift was that he could smell things you wouldn’t imagine would smell of anything- things like sadness and desperation. Things like far and hopelessness.He never made a big deal about it, but he was quiet and confident – and when you believe in own abilities, you are much more likely to be always ready to act on them, which Oscar always was. Whenever I asked him about it, he claimed that his were not exceptional or extraordinary abilities in the slightest. Everyone, he said, is able to tell when someone is in need of help, but few people really take the time to listen to their instincts, and that, he said, was the only difference between him and a lot of other of people.
— Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, The Apple Tart of Hope
Listening has certainly become a scarce skill, therefore we need ways to enhance this skill especially for the next generation.
— Gugu Mona
People usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming into what’s good for them.
— Clifford Cohen
People are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them.
— Pope Francis, The Name of God is Mercy
Listening isn't just about being quiet.It's about listening to -What is Said,What is Unsaid,and What is meantWith your Eyes, Ears and Heart
— Wordions
One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew
— Rick Perlstein, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
She was as bored as her brother would have been, and had not his gift of listening beneath words.
— E.M. Forster, Maurice
There was something in the way he posed a question and followed it up with a generous pause, I think, that drew me out. I had never noticed all the pauses that were missing from most people's conversations.
— Suzanne Rindell, Three-Martini Lunch
Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the “apostolate of the ear,” and it is important. Very important. I feel compelled to say to confessors: talk, listen with patience, and above all tell people that God loves them.
— Pope Francis
Due to previous lack of systematic assessment of dissociative symptoms, many subjects experience the SCID-D as their first opportunity to describe their symptoms in their own words to a receptive listener.
— Marlene Steinberg, Interviewer's Guide to the Structured Clinical Interview for Dsm-IV (R) Dissociative Disorders (Scid-D)
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, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality for Real Life
Are You Listening Attentively? There’s so much power in listening! I challenge you to listen more. Really pay attention to what people are saying. What are they REALLY talking about? Many times we overlook and/or make excuses for people’s conversations. Don’t allow people to dump garbage in your spirit. What we listen to can have a negative effect on what, and how, we think. Be choosy about the relationships you entertain. Surround yourself with people that bring out the best in you. People that are positive, inspiring, and genuine. Remember: Value your time! Don’t waste it on dead-end and/or fake relationships.
— Stephanie Lahart
Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech.
— Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion
I believe my mother was smart enough to know that in the night, you are willing to tell all. If she waited until the next day, she knew she'd get one-syllable answers.
— H.W. Brands
Most of the problems in life are because:We misunderstand people's intentions, We don't listen and jump to conclusions, Then we are too proud to apologise and too stubborn to forgive.
— Mouloud Benzadi
And he listened to me. That was the thing he did, as if he was trying to fill himself up with all the sound he could hear. He listened to the wind and the falling ocean and my voice, always with rapt attention, a concentration that almost excluded physical bodies themselves and kept only the sounds.
— Ray Bradbury, The Illustrated Man
I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories.
— Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
He knew most men only heard what they wanted to hear, and he had no desire to be like most men.
— Dan Groat, A Punctual Paymaster
People don't only speak with their mouths. They speak with their whole being. Sometimes they mean what they don't say and say what they don't mean; so listen with your whole being also. Let your whole being connect to theirs. Do not only listen to their voice, but also to their body language and their emotions. Listen with your ears and your heart.
— Bangambiki Habyarimana
I stopped short and sighed as Derek stepped up behind me, arms sliding around my waist. I leaned back against him and rel
— Kelley Armstrong, Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions
It is only through dialogue, deep listening, and passionate disagreement that we find our way to something larger than a singular and isolated point of view.
— Henry Kimsey-House, Co-Active Leadership: Five Ways to Lead
She spoke of these with animation, and heard my admiring comments with a smile of pleasure: that soon, however, vanished, and was followed by a melancholy sigh; as if in consideration of the insufficiency of all such baubles to the happiness of the human heart, and their woeful inability to supply its insatiate demands.
— Anne Brontë, Agnes Grey
The most important thing a man has to tell you is what he’s not telling you,” he said. “The most important thing he has to say is what he’s trying not to say.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
It takes courage to listen to your inner knowing … But once you hear that knowing, making a decision becomes fairly easy.
— Joseph Jaworski, Source: The Inner Path of Knowledge Creation
Listening is the key. The whole objective of a howl is to be heard.
— Amit  Pandey, The Retro Man
I’ll listen if you want me to... But I think I should tell you now that nothing you can say will make any difference. If you don’t mind that, I don’t mind listening.
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
Listening to the opinions of only those who seek to please you is like looking at yourself through a broken mirror
—  the view is distorted
Personal truth differs from one person to the next, so how can truth itself be a constant? At least we can listen to each other in truth.
— Jay Woodman
He could follow someone’s mind around, and get where it was going before the other fellow knew where it was going.
— Robert A. Caro, Master of the Senate
More than anything else, your people want you to listen to them.
— Sunday Adelaja
We talk, even if no one listens, because we never know when someone will.
— Caitlyn Paige
To listen to what I'd heard - as if I'd already learned everything I needed.
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, to welcome, to accept.Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that, those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously and discovering their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith
You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find remarkable change taking place in you – a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind. And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything – not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying; to the birds, to the whistle of a locomotive, to the noise of the bus gong by. You will find that the more you listen to everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between yourself and that to which you do not want to listen – it is only then that there is a struggle.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Book of Life
Piglet said that Tigger was very Bouncy, and that if they could think of a way of unbouncing him, it would be a Very Good Idea. "Just what I feel," said Rabbit. "What do you say, Pooh?" Pooh opened his eyes with a jerk and said, "Extremely." "Extremely what?" asked Rabbit. "What you were saying," said Pooh. "Undoubtably.
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.
— Chris Cleave, Incendiary
The person you're most afraid to contradict is yourself.
— Nassim Taleb
Can we listen to each other the way veins listen to blood?
— Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred
At the heart of good communication, is not the process of talking, but that of listening. The first step to improve your listening skills is to stop talking. It is very difficult to talk and listen at the same time.
— Tony Buon, The Leadership Coach
Turn off the radio, TV, DVD, iPod, computer and cell phone. Then, listen.
— Gina Greenlee, Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road
Sometimes all that’s needed to heal a wounded soul and lift a sagging spirit is one loving listener, for at its core, listening is love–love that sacrifices its need to be heard in favor of hearing, a desire to lecture in favor of learning, an opportunity to show off in favor of showing compassion. Instead of always leading the way, a patient listener, just by nodding in all the right places, can help a wanderer discover the right path on her own.
— Claudia Barba, The Monday Morning Club
Every experienced pastor knows that what the penitent heart says about itself is much more consequential than well-made truthful sentences that shout from the outside of the inner voice of conscience. No element of confession is more crucial than the discipline of listening. The attentive listener is a chosen agent of divine reconciliation. When the moment for keen listening is offered, take it as an inestimable gift.
— Thomas C. Oden, Corrective Love: The Power of Communion Discipline
Learn to listen when people are talking. Frist, it's a great art, and second, it's quite possible that when people say ne thing they mean another.
— Julie Andrews Edwards, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
Anyone can talk,   but to listen is a gift,     we should all exchange
— J. Benson, Haiku to Live By: Life affirming messages, to hearten your day
To hear is one thing, to know is another.
— Rudyard Kipling
Listening is an act of love. When you listen to people, you are communicating non-verbally that they are important to you.
— Jim George, A Husband After God's Own Heart
Sometimes you are not supposed to say anything. Just listen. Let the other person spit it out.
— RD
Successful selling begins with listening. Your job when you are in front of the prospect is to ask questions and then listen to the answers. Take copious notes about what they tell you
—  what they say and what they don't say.
Zane raised his brow. “Didn’t I say that yesterday?” he asked, forcinghimself to be patient. Somehow.“You say that like you think I listen to you,” Ty responded instantly, asmile pulling at his lips.
— Abigail Roux
When we want to talk, we can instead listen, and let our attentiveness to another's need to speak, be our silent statement.
— Bryant McGill, Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
If he stays inside himself, if he is contained within his nature as he is participant in the larger force, he will be able to listen, and his hearing through himself will give him secrets objects share.
— Charles Olson
Give me a half hour's conversation. I will know more than I will reading 20 magazines.
— Joseph Kennedy
A skilled listener can help people tap into their own wisdom.
— Richard Rohr
It's a selfish habit. I never learn anything from listening to myself.
— Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behavior
In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.
— Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
In our post-everything culture, obey has become a four-letter word. Obeying is for wimps. Obeying is for people who didn’t do well enough on their SATs to write their own rules. Only the weak and the feeble and the young—-well, not even the young anymore—-need to obey. Funny, because the root of the word obey is from the French verb meaning “to listen, or to give ear to.” It was never intended as a militant word, but one of hearing, of understanding. Of getting it. For a world obsessed with staying in constant communication, we aren’t really very good listeners.
— Heather Choate Davis, Elijah & the SAT: Reflections on a hairy old desert prophet and the benchmarking of our children's lives
If, however, we pursue what is expressed in the phrase 'the language of things', we are pointed in a similar direction. The language of things too is something to which we should pay better attention. This expression also has a kind of polemical accent. It expresses the fact that, in general, we are not at all ready to hear things in there own being, that they are subjected to man's calculus and to his domination of nature through the rationality of science.
— GADAMER, HANS GEORG
You can talk all you want about freedom of speech, but it's freedom of hearing that counts.
— Tommy Smothers
If I tell you I am upset about everything that's going on around me, you will probably ask me why, half listening, half wandering away in your own train of thoughts...If I tell you I am happy, you will probably not bother to know why, congratulating me and forgetting..I should rather tell you I am fine, satisfied, you will probably tell me your own issues then, for which I will be all ears
— Sanhita Baruah
When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard. I have deeply appreciated the times that I have experienced this sensitive, empathic, concentrated listening.
— Carl R. Rogers
I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.("The Graveyard Reader")
— Theodore Sturgeon, Weird Shadows From Beyond: An Anthology Of Strange Stories
We imagine always when we speak that it is our own ears, our own mind, that are listening.
— Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
The only way to entertain some folks is to listen to them.
— Kin Hubbard
There is a saying that, paper is more patient than man.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
Listen to what you have written. A dud rhythm in a passage of dialogue may show that you don't yet understand the characters well enough to write in their vo
— Helen Dunmore
Surround yourself with music. Just be sure to turn the radio on.
— Lisa M. Cronkhite
Just because someone doesn't respond...doesn't mean they are not Listening.
— M (Michelle) Carithers
It comes down to this: If you want to be seen, heard and understood in the most genuine way possible, be open to the possiblity of vulnerability. Allow yourself to be open. I know it’s a scary place, a place very few people dare to venture, but just try it. Try moving the masks away and really looking at a person the next time they engaged in conversation with you.
— Leigh Hershkovich
I'd much rather hear someone's unique interpretation of their own experience. Those who negate or override someone else's experience in order to one-up them or to show off their own knowledge or perceived abilities are in truth showing off their lack of listening skills and wisdom.
— Tonya Sheridan
The best listeners are often those with the quietest heart.
— Marie Sabillo
Auntie Yang is not hard of hearing. She is hard of listening.
— Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club
Our civic life is heavily marked—indeed, pocked—by debates in which each side is so certain of its position that any movement is effectively impossible. For that matter, debate—in its original sense of “to consider something, to deliberate”—is impossible. We wind up with so much sound and fury and nothing gained.
— Leah Hager Cohen, I Don't Know: In Praise of Admitting Ignorance
The intelligent talk and the wise listen.
— Raheel Farooq
You really pay attention to things, don’t you?” “Just with people I care about,” he said with a smile, “I think I get that from my mother. She was a really kind and giving person from what I remember, and she used to tell me, ‘Don’t just listen to people, hear them.’ I never forgot that.” “Wow,” I responded, “That’s so true. How many people really hear what we say?
— Jackie Pilossoph, Jackpot!
Elizabeth was so sweet this afternoon trying to show P.B. his sitting room. He became absorbed in some jungle prints along the passage and would not come. The corners of her mouth went down after the third attempt & putting both hands on his shoulders she said angelically: ‘Bertie do listen to me.’ He kissed her and came at once.
— William Shawcross, The Queen Mother: The Official Biography
I always felt as if I'd been handed a cardboard box crammed full of monkeys. I'd take the monkeys out of the box one at a time, carefully brush off the dust, give them a pat on the bottom, and send them scurrying off into the fields. I never knew where they went from there.
— Haruki Murakami, Pinball, 1973
They listened more than they talked, but that was the way of wise men and women.
— Lee  Goff, A Rage Like Thunder
It 'appens to be true. An' if'n yew want ter stay moi friend, yew'd best 'old yer turpitudinous twaddle of a tongue an' listen fer once.
— Peter St. John, Gang Loyalty
Samuel finally understood the sound of the wind after all these years: The winds were a chorus of the prairie’s ever-present heartaches.
— Andrew Galasetti, These Colors Don't Run
I always listen to what I can leave out.
— Miles Davis
I love to write and to get to know the people who are listening.
— Emilie Autumn
The only problem is the heart is quiet. It takes a very special kind of person to hear what the heart says. Most can't hear it at all and they have to guess. There are a lot of people walking around just guessing.
— Suzanne Palmieri, The Witch of Little Italy
..."But 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 you go and do it." "Oh, I see," said Pooh. "This is a nothing sort of thing that we're doing right now." "Oh, I see," said Pooh again. "It means just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear and not bothering." "Oh!" said Pooh.
— A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
solutions have a voice - the art is knowing how to listen
— Gino Norris
I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick listening. It breaks down prejudices and stereotypes; it widens self-imposed limits; it takes one into another's life, her hard times and, if there is any, her joy too.
— Andrea Dworkin
Each of us has one. Each voice is distinct and has something to say. Each voice deserves to be heard. But it requires the act of listening.
— Terry Tempest Williams, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Where the rivers meetyou tell me of your black dreams.Your memories make me uneasy.But I listen because I knowmy listening, like all other listeningallows you to heal.
— Holly Lynn Payne, The Sound of Blue: A Novel
The art of hearing what somebody has to say is actually, listening.
— Colette Ruland Parrino
If God places a child before you, and you are too busy to wield either a positive or negative influence...you just did the later! You communicated that the child doesn't matter and isn't important.
— Wess Stafford, Too Small to Ignore: Why Children Are the Next Big Thing
She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul.
— Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
What good was speaking when I'd determined none of the world listened to one another, especially not when a woman was speaking.
— Leanna Renee Hieber, Darker Still
...you listen first with the ears - then, you wait and listen for what your heart feels - then you consider what they've said - then, you reply ...
— John Geddes, A Familiar Rain
Like most so-called debates between liberals and conservatives, they weren’t interested in listening or responding to each other. They were solely concerned with making sound bites.
— Bob Frey, SuperMale's Gone and Left Us
How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our conversation mainly a question of my waiting for him to stop and for it to be my turn to say something? For how many of us is that what conversation means - the setting up of our lines?
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.
— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood
I fell in love with his unchanging soul.
— Claudia Gray, A Thousand Pieces of You
For some reason I believed that if you fell in love it was a guaranteed thing that your path would cross with his, and I never wondered how if would feel to fall in love with a man whose future just couldn't include you.
— Laura Pritchett, Sky Bridge
In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains—flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado’s intensity doesn’t abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost.
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
It's as if I've stepped off the edge of a cliff, and even though my heart's in my mouth and my stomach is in knots, I'm the most excited I've ever been in my life. I'm totally enthralled by him. I want him, every part of him, and I desperately want him to feel the same way about me.
— Serena Grey, Rebellion
Love is simple. You fall and that's it. You'll work the other stuff out. You just gotta let yourself fall and have faith that someone will be there to catch you."I didn't want to do any falling. Falling usually led to meeting a hard surface in an unpleasant way.
— Chelsea M. Cameron, My Favorite Mistake
No one ever fell in love gracefully.
— Connie Brockway, The Bridal Season
All I’m saying is that I don’t want to sort of fall in love with fifty different people. I’d rather find one person and fall completely, deeply in over my head.
— Anna White, The Light and Fallen
She was not filled up with the sight of him, the way she had seen her sisters fill up, like silk balloons, like wineskins. Instead, he seemed to land heavily within her, like a black stone falling.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Is this how it goes? You fall in love, and nothing seems truly scary anymore, and life is one big possibility?
— Jenny Han, Always and Forever, Lara Jean
How'd you know he was the one?""I didn't know. I don't think either of us knew."Heather rolled her eyes. "Neal knew — he proposed to you.""It's not like that," Georgie said. "You'll see. It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the one — and then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you're right.
— Rainbow Rowell, Landline
Don't fall in love rise with it
— Amit Abraham, Rules of Attraction : Get The One You Admire
His expression became serious, and his hand almost slipped from mine. "I've had a long time to think about it.""This can't work!"He looked down, then jerked his head up in frustration as his finger tightened on mine. "I'm not asking you to marry me, Rachel. I just ..."My heart pounded, and he stepped closer, so close the scent of cinnamon and wine enveloped me."I like walking into a room and seeing your face light up when you see me," he said earnestly, the sun from the open window making his hair glow. "I like arguing with Quen over the wisdom of employing a demon to be my security."My throat caught. This wasn't going to happen, but something in me was withering. I wanted more--and I knew I couldn't have it.He touched my hair, and I twitched as he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “I want to wake up beside you, see your curls on my pillow. I want a chance at falling in love.” My breath came fast. That was what I wanted too, and it hurt more than I thought was possible to survive.
— Kim Harrison, The Undead Pool
As long as she was falling in love with me, I might as well start making her promises I didn't intend to keep.
— Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys
Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.
— Beth Kephart, Undercover
I have flown and fallen, and I have swum deep and drowned, but there should be more to love than "I survived it.
— Lisa Mantchev, So Silver Bright
Most people know the sheer wonder that goes with falling in love, how not only does everything in heaven and earth become new, but the lover himself becomes new. It is literally like the sap rising in the tree, putting forth new green shoots of life.
— Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God
I'm falling in love. I am in love. and it's not with Xander, though I do love him. I'm sure of that, as sure as I am of the fact what I feel for Ky is something different.
— Ally Condie, Matched
The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgement by the party of the second part's glamour. Put it like this: the male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine for the non-rabbit) and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce.
— P.G. Wodehouse, How Right You Are, Jeeves
Am I falling in love? She thought, is it safe to do so with this man? She thought, I don't need to answer.
— Freya North, Chances
I will never be without information,' she determined. 'I will do better than my sisters. If a bird or any other beast comes out of that uncanny republic where husbands are grown, I will see him with his skin off before I agree to fall in love.' For this is how Marya Morevna surmised that love was shaped: an agreement, a treaty between two nations that one could either sign or not as they pleased.
— Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
Once upon a time I was falling in love. Now I'm only falling apart.
— xxblagitxx, Kiss Cam
How do you not fall in love with him?"The tears begin flowing just as quickly as they were ceasing. I grab yet another tissue.  "I don't not fall in love with him. I don't not fall in love with him a lot!
— Colleen Hoover, Slammed