Listeners Quotes - Page 17

• The most skillful flattery is to let a person talk on, and be a listener.

  Joseph Addison

  Flattery, Persons, Skillful

  34 Copy quote

• Women are good listeners, but it's a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there's something specific you want him to do.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Men, Listening, Want

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.47, BookBaby

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good story is alive, ever changing and growing as it meets each listener or reader in a spirited and unique encounter, while the moralistic tale is not only dead on arrival, it's already been embalmed. It's safer that way. When a lively story goes dancing out to meet the imagination of a child, the teller loses control over meaning. The child gets to decide what the story means.

  Katherine Paterson

  Children, Mean, Unique

  11 Copy quote

• Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.

  Helen Keller

  White, Listening, Crow

  Helen Keller (2000). “To Love this Life: Quotations”, p.63, American Foundation for the Blind

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• Surely the hold of great music on the listener is precisely this: that the listener is made whole; and at the same time part of an image of infinite grace and grandeur which is creation.

  Marya Mannes

  Grace, Infinite, Great Music

  7 Copy quote

• Mozart eliminates the idea of haste from life. His airs could not lag as they make their journey through the listener's attention; they are not the right shape for loitering. But it is as true that they never rush, they are never headlong or helter-skelter, they splash no mud, they raise no dust.

  Rebecca West

  Music, Journey, Air

  Rebecca West (2010). “Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia”, p.292, Open Road Media

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some of the most successful people managers are also the best listeners.

  Mary Kay Ash

  Successful, People, Management

  14 Copy quote

• A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.

  Susan Sontag

  Intelligent, Listening, Important

  Susan Sontag (2012). “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980”, p.382, Macmillan

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The source of each accordant strain
  Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.
  First from the people's heart must spring
  The passions which he learns to sing;
  They are the wind, the harp is he,
  To voice their fitful melody,--
  The language of their varying fate,
  Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,--
  The talisman which holds inwrought
  The touchstone of the listener's thought;
  That penetrates each vain disguise,
  And brings his secret to his eyes.

  Bayard Taylor

  Lying, Hate, Spring

  Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.111

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The aging process seems to strike first at the mechanism which warns that we have been talking too much and the listener is growing restless. The signal isn't perfect at any age - drink, for instance, throws it right out of kilter - but it is almost non-existent in old people.

  Barbara Walters

  Talking, People, Perfect

  6 Copy quote

• Female listeners are leaving traditional talk radio because of the rough-edged, shouting nature of it. Women want more light and less heat.

  Jane Fonda

  Light, Leaving, Female

  "Jane Fonda on Men, Power and Plastic Surgery". Interview with Marianne Schnall, www.glamour.com. January 31, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

  Conor Oberst

  Art, People, Appreciate

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Woman's work as a listener is never done. ... I thought I'd spent too much of my life listening for some damn man - for my father and now for my husband.

  Adela Rogers St. Johns

  Husband, Father, Men

  9 Copy quote

• By some mysterious method, Susan Carr's gossip gave the listener a gentler feeling towards his kind. When she spoke of her neighbors' faults, one knew that somehow they were simply virtues gone to seed.

  Margaret Deland

  Gossip, Feelings, Gone

  5 Copy quote

• I certainly fall in love with artists. I think that's probably the aspiration of an artist, to make a listener empathize so deeply that they do fall in love with you.

  K. D. Lang

  Falling In Love, Love You, Artist

  11 Copy quote

• Believe me, nothing is so calculated to lose you audience sympathy as too many tears. Move your listeners all you can but let them do the crying.

  Ilka Chase

  Believe, Moving, Tears

  Ilka Chase (1963). “Elephants Arrive at Half-past Five”, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When will talkers refrain from evil speaking? When listeners refrain from evil hearing. At present there are many so credulous of evil, they will receive suspicions and impressions against persons whom they don't know, from a person whom they do know--an authority good for nothing.

  Augustus William Hare

  Evil, Hearing, Authority

  Julius Charles Hare, Augustus William Hare (1861). “Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers: From the Fifth London Ed”, p.185

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Story is a relationship between the teller and the listener, a responsibility. After the listening you become accountable for the sacred knowledge that has been shared.

  Terry Tempest Williams

  Responsibility, Listening, Stories

  Terry Tempest Williams (1984). “Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland”, p.130, UNM Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• ... I have always been a disappointment to my friends. I have no gift of talk, not much to say; and though I have always been an excellent listener, that only succeeds under auspicious circumstances.

  Margaret Oliphant

  Disappointment, Succeed, Excellent

  Margaret Oliphant (2002). “The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant”, p.185, Broadview Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is almost axiomatic that the best conversationalist is really the best listener.

  Arlene Francis

  Conversation

  Arlene Francis (1960). “That Certain Something; the Magic of Charm”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Children, they're the same everywhere. Greedy little creatures but the best listeners in the world - any world. The very best of all.

  Cornelia Funke

  Children, World, Littles

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkspell”, p.160, Scholastic Inc.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Radio is truly the theater of the mind. The listener constructs the sets, colors them from his own palette, and sculpts and costumes the characters who perform in them.

  Mercedes McCambridge

  Character, Color, Imagination

  Mercedes McCambridge (1982). “The Quality of Mercy”, Berkley Publishing Group

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Begin your story with a sentence that will immediately grab hold of your listener's ears like a surly nun in a Catholic school.

  Amy Sedaris

  School, Catholic, Stories

  7 Copy quote

• Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Music, Ears, Please

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Leopold Mozart (1966). “The Letters of Mozart and His Family”

  136 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am a composer first and foremost, and have always believed that being able to write memorable melodies is what sets musicians apart. My songs bring images to the listener's mind. The object is to transport my listeners to another place, some place sacred and spiritual that will make them glad they took the ride.

  Bradley Joseph

  Spiritual, Song, Memorable

  4 Copy quote