Quotes about Listening

Prayer is not asking. Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God, at His disposition, and listening to His voice in the depth of our hearts.

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Communication is the ability to ensure that people understand not only what you say but also what you mean. It is also the ability to listen to and understand others. Developing both of these aspects of communication takes a lot of time, patience, and hard work.

Scripture trains us to listen to and learn from stories of all kinds, inside the sacred text and outside, and to discern patterns and meanings within them. Stories of all sorts form and shape the character of those who read them. We live within the narrative as creatures in search of an ending, in search of happiness.

All this means that we are called to be people who learn to hear God's voice speaking today within the ancient text, and who become vessels of that living word in the world around us.

though the Western tradition and particularly the Protestant and evangelical traditions have claimed to be based on the Bible and rooted in scripture, they have by and large developed long-lasting and subtle strategies for not listening to what the Bible is in fact saying. We must stop giving nineteenth-century answers to sixteenth-century questions and try to give twenty-first-century answers to first-century questions.

Listening to things that are not true is the first step toward ultimate bondage and death. That

Listening to counsel or ways of thinking that are not according to the Truth is the first step in developing wrong beliefs that will ultimately place us in bondage. Once we have listened to the lie, the next step toward bondage is that we . . .   DWELL ON THE LIE.

Our churches are being destroyed by gossip. What is it about us that wants to hear all the garbage?

I have always endeavored to listen to what each and every person in a discussion had to say before venturing my own opinion. Oftentimes, my own opinion will simply represent a consensus of what I heard in the discussion. I always remember the regent's axiom: a leader, he said is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, to realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.

Be interesting, be enthusiastic... and don't talk to much.

Dizzy," I said, "it's Animals taking revenge on people." Dizzy always believes me, but this time he wasn't listening.