Top 100 Great Listening Quotes
#1. The great movement of the spiritual life is from a deaf, nonhearing life to a life of listening.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#2. I told a joke and people laughed and it was the best feeling. I knew I wanted to do this as a career. I never knew I could get such a high from telling a joke. There's something so extraordinary about having people listening to you and hanging onto your words - it's a great feeling.
Chris Tucker
#3. And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.
John Steinbeck
#4. In all the great periods of the drama perfect freedom of choice and subject, perfect freedom of individual treatment, and an audience eager to give itself to sympathetic listening, even if instruction be involved, have brought the great results.
George Pierce Baker
#5. One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
Branford Marsalis
#6. Being a recording artist and having thousands of people listening to your music and singing your songs, and paying for it? It feels great!
PJ Harvey
#7. I am permanently a student of people who make great songs, but besides sort of learning by absorption, I just love listening to music, hearing what's going on, hearing new things or new old things.
John Darnielle
#8. I've been musically inclined since I picked up an instrument in the fourth grade. I just really appreciate music. I love to listen to it; I love to sing. I wouldn't consider myself, like, a natural singer. I just developed it over time, honestly, just listening. I'm a great listener to music.
Kyrie Irving
#9. 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
#10. I was an original Elvis fan. He was the voice of my generation. I was listening to him on the radio when he released his great Sun records with Scotty Moore on electric guitar and Bill Black on bass.
Ronnie Milsap
#11. The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You're there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see - every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
Graham Greene
#12. The reward for the watching eye and listening ear is great.
Yann Martel
#13. We love to learn because learning feels good. It both satisfies and stimulates curiosity. Reading a good book, having a meaningful conversation, listening to great music - just doing these things make us happy. They have no extrinsic purpose. To give them one takes away from their joy.
Zander Sherman
#14. We sit on park benches and beaches and couches and hilltops, listening and dreaming seemingly to no particular purpose. But isn't it often the case that when we cease to move and think, we see and hear and understand a great deal?
Brian Doyle
#15. I just want my songs to be memorable, and for people to hear my songs in ten year's time and remember the great times they had while listening to 'em.
Cher Lloyd
#16. Part of what being a great founder is, is being both able to hold the belief, to think about what it is you want to be doing and where ... you want to be going, but also be smart enough that you're essentially listening to criticism, negative feedback, competitive entries.
Reid Hoffman
#17. I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds. Any artist's big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that's great.
Damien Hirst
#18. With other people, you're always swapping music. Somebody is always listening to something you've never heard. It's a great way to hear all sorts of new things.
Tracy Chapman
#19. My favorite type of music to sing to would be rock and roll, Tenacious D, Led Zeppelin, some Queen - I love all of them. I love singing to them because they're all just great voices. I love listening to very obscure jazz.
Casey Abrams
#20. Listening can make the difference between a mediocre organization and a great one.
Lee Iacocca
#21. Always keep your ego in check and not be afraid to listen. Listening is a great art form.
Clint Eastwood
#22. Many words will be written on the wind and the sand, or end up in some obscure digital vault. But the storytelling will go on until the last human being stops listening. Then we can send the great chronicle of humanity out into the endless universe.
Henning Mankell
#23. The learning curve on soaps is through the roof because it's a three-camera setup. There's a master and then there's two singles. And the great thing about soaps, and soap actors will tell you, is that when you get your line wrong, they don't re-shoot it. They just cut to the person listening.
John C. McGinley
#24. My mom played 12-string and sang, and my dad could play pretty much any wind instrument and had a great ear for harmony. Soon enough, my sister and I got into music because we were always around it, and people were always listening to it.
Nathaniel Rateliff
#25. I really love listening to Hozier. He's great.
Shawn Mendes
#26. Everyone who is worth listening to will take great pains to express how limited their knowledge is.
Anna Valdiserri
#27. For so long, I hadn't really heard Margo - I'd seen her screaming and thought her laughing - that now I figured it was my job. To try, even at this great remove, to hear the opera of her.
John Green
#28. As he rested in the great hollow shell of tranquility and light, listening to its silence, it dawned upon him that 'empty' was the wrong word for this place. It was as full as could be: full of silence, full of light, full of peace. There
Penelope Wilcock
#29. When all seems hopeless and all has gone silent, that's Destiny turning down the music so that all may hear our response to life's great storms, giving our response the chance to echo throughout eternity with the level of greatness it deserves.
A.J. Darkholme
#30. The Horror of the world was that thousands of evils fell upon innocent people, and no one was punished and with great promise there was nothing but pain and desire Children mutilated to form a choir of seraphim. Their song was a cry to heaven the sky was not listening.
Anne Rice
#31. Most people like the sad songs. Some of the oldest songs known to man are sad. Listening to a voice singing something sad is a really great way to help you to feel sad when you need to.
Patty Griffin
#32. I love music. It's always been a big part of my life, and I don't think people should, you know, judge me by my last name instead of listening to the album. I think the music definitely speaks for itself, and it's a great album.
Paris Hilton
#33. As before, there is a great silence, with no end in sight. The writer surrenders, listening.
Jayne Anne Phillips
#34. The world does not have time to be with the poor, to learn with the poor, to listen to the poor. To listen to the poor is an exercise of great discipline, but such listening surely is what is required if charity is not to become a hatred of the poor for being poor.
Stanley Hauerwas
#35. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, the voice is its song. You can tell a great deal about a man by listening to him.
Kristen Callihan
#37. There's a great space in which this moment takes place. There's a great silence that is listening to the thoughts.
Adyashanti
#38. I live in a rural residential area. It's a great place for a walk. I'm at my happiest when I'm listening to my iPod while walking around where my feet take me.
Park Chan-wook
#39. You see young people, or kids, and they're fascinated by the way people talk. And that's great. But eventually you get to the point where you think, 'You know what? I don't care how you talk, I'm just listening to what you're saying.'
Chris Morris
#40. I grew up with singers. My father's mother sang opera. My dad was a big band singer. I can't remember a time there wasn't music in the house, so I grew up listening to great songwriters - George Gershwin, Cole Porter - and my grandma was playing opera for me before I was 3.
J. D. Souther
#41. I've noticed that great political leaders are energized by conflict. I'm energized by listening to people's stories and trying to figure out shared solutions. That's the work of an organizer.
Gloria Steinem
#42. We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual 'autism.'
Thomas Berry
#43. Everything I do, whether it's producing or signing an artist, always starts with the songs. When I'm listening, I'm looking for a balance that you could see in anything. Whether it's a great painting or a building or a sunset.
Rick Rubin
#44. One of great arts of communication is the skill of listening to people
Sunday Adelaja
#45. Great readers, great listeners, and all have great work ethics ... They work hard at what they do and they're devout to their reading and listening.
Andy Wilkinson
#46. 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
#47. There is a certain manner of self-absorption in speaking that always renders the speaker disagreeable. For it is as great a folly to listen only to ourselves while we are carrying on a conversation with others as it is to talk to ourselves while we are alone.
Madeleine De Souvre, Marquise De ...
#48. Applause, it's very nice, of course. But when you're giving, and creating, and then there is the silence of everyone sitting there, listening, waiting, that is great.
Anna Netrebko
#49. If I'd been listening closely, I'd have caught the sound of the gods having a great big old tee-hee at my expense.
Sue Grafton
#50. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhauser" and seeing in the prelude to that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul.
Oscar Wilde
#51. There's a great relationship between pop music and the way the body could be seen from the inside - when I was singing or listening to music I would change shape in my head, becoming all kinds of things and people. Music is a way of making your body.
Jenny Hval
#52. Frank Sinatra was a great singer, but my favourite is Sammy Davis Jr. He had incredible versatility in his voice, often doing impressions of people. It's always going to be classic, and you'll never get bored listening.
Anton Du Beke
#53. I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.
Ernest Hemingway,
#54. You've been listening to the adagio from Beethoven's 7th Symphony. I think Ludwig pretty much summed up death in this one. You know, he had lost just about all his hearing when he wrote it, and I've often wondered if that didn't help him tune into the final silence of the great beyond.
Andrew Schneider
#55. Good students pay attention to their teachers;
great students teach themselves.
Matshona Dhliwayo
#56. All great leaders find a sense of balance through their levels of reception. For instance, those who support a leader may soften him, those who ignore him may challenge him, and those who oppose him may stroke his ego.
Criss Jami
#57. Lead by listening - to be a good leader you have to be a great listener.
Richard Branson
#58. I began telling stories as a volunteer in my daughters' school. But I grew up hearing stories from Cuban and Southern storytellers, and I learned a great deal by just being quiet and listening.
Carmen Agra Deedy
#59. My parents are great listeners
Which is why I never tell them anything
Sonya Sones
#60. If I do depart this world out here, let it be known that I went out grinning will you, and loving it. LOVING IT.
Steve, are you listening ? I FEEL GREAT. Life's so joyous, so sad, so ephemeral, so crazy, so meaningless, so goddamn funny. This is paradise, and I wish I could give you some.
Robyn Davidson
#61. I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something that I really don't think is that great.
Trent Reznor
#62. My husband works in the music industry and he's always the first to know about great new bands, so I end up seeming really with it because I'll be listening to an up-and-coming band before everyone else hears about it.
Gail Simmons
#63. Hearing the missionary call has a great deal to do with what you are listening for.
David Sills
#64. So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to silence.
Muriel Spark
#65. Playing music is a beautiful thing. But listening to music is just as great.
Flea
#66. I was up until all hours of the night, listening to stories, meeting great old comedians.
Joely Fisher
#67. Reading great works of literature, discovering poetry, and listening to the best composers are all ways that we learn to love the Creator more.
Jennifer A. Marshall
#68. Great acting is about listening to what they are saying ... not waiting to deliver your lines.
Michael Caine
#69. On first listening, Joni Mitchell's 'Court And Spark,' the first truly great pop album of 1974, sounds surprisingly light; by the third or fourth listening, it reveals its underlying tensions.
Jon Landau
#70. To be a great composer requires immense experience ... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!
Frederic Chopin
#71. The first time I started listening to Irish music, I had a very strong connection. Strangely enough, there's a great many Japanese melodies and vocal styles that sound very much like Hungarian music. You start seeing all these cross-references and comparative, independent musical cultures.
Tom Waits
#72. Real-life discussions involve a great many bores and boors who have never learned that the art of conversation demands listening as well as talking.
Susan Jacoby
#73. Periods of silent solitude spent in introspective reflecting are sacred and a source of great strength and comfort. We can learn from listening to the rhythms of nature and from appreciating the eternal hush of the cosmos.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#74. I have a great gynecologist who is as gifted at listening as she is at rectal exams.
Tina Fey
#77. A panoramic vision of Bob Dylan, his music, his shifting place in American culture, from multiple angles. In fact, reading Sean Wilentz's Bob Dylan in America is as thrilling and surprising as listening to a great Dylan song.
Martin Scorsese
#78. Listening to these stories reminded me of the words of the great Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah: For seasons and seasons and seasons, all our movement has been going against our self, a journey into our killer's desire.
Gloria Steinem
#79. Just listening, can sometimes be a great act of kindness!
Jose N. Harris
#80. Once writing becomes an act of listening instead of an act of speech, a great deal of the ego goes out of it.
Julia Cameron
#81. While I had many friends as a child I aslo kept a great deal to myself. I noticed that adults were drawn to me. They would talk to me for hours at my parents' parties. Strange to find yourself at seven, dressed in pagamas with feet, listening to adults tell you their deepest secrets.
Frederick Lenz
#82. I love jazz and pop rock and country. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Def Leppard, AC/DC, Anne Murray - if I hear something really great ... I want to be a part of it.
Natalie MacMaster
#83. Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.
Alan Watts
#84. I took Miss Stanwyck home and had a great time listening to her dish the party and everyone there. We went in for a nightcap, and I ended up spending the night. We enjoyed each other's company to the fullest.
Farley Granger
#85. That's what I love. Not being interrupted, sitting in a car by myself and listening to music in the rain. There are so many great songs yet to sing.
Alison Krauss
#86. Hats off to Tavia Gilbert who made Bones alive for me. What a great writer and narrator team. You make listening fun!"
Tavia Gilbert
#87. I think I'm aware of entering my late 30s versus being in my late 20s, when the web was coming out as this new thing. It reminds me of how people used to tell me about my great-grandmother and how they used to gather around a radio listening to soap operas.
Kalup Linzy
#88. I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music.
Jane Wiedlin
#89. The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it. We have talked enough; but we have not listened. And by not listening we have failed to concede the immense complexity of our society - and thus the great gaps between ourselves and those with whom we seek understanding.
William H. Whyte
#90. Failure comes when you don't listen. You can't put something out there and assume it's great. It's up to us to make sure we're listening to improve our chances for success-if not this time, next time.
Alan Lewis
#91. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, everything from country to rock, pop, R&B and even rap, so for me, music is music and a great song is a great song.
Jason Aldean
#92. In a world where the great technologies enable us to record, replay, cut and paste, zoom in, and delete, listening is the crucial commitment to keep the heart touchable.
Mark Nepo
#93. Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.
Roberto Benigni
#94. My mother had a great vinyl collection, and she was constantly playing female singer-songwriters. I first learned about classic song structures by listening to them, and Laura Nyro particularly stood out. Her voice was outside what you'd usually hear on the radio; that really appealed to me.
Jenny Lewis
#95. It's uncomfortable, definitely, but it's also really, really great to talk drums with kids and hear them get excited about music and talk about listening to the drums.
Patty Schemel
#96. I was listening to a lot of Norwegian black metal and death metal. There's a great history to Norwegian black metal. That music is very dark and violent, but it's also beautiful.
Brie Larson
#97. There's this Ryan Gosling quote that I steal all the time - I watched an interview with him in Cannes - and he said picking roles is like listening to songs on the radio: There can be a lot of really great songs in a row, but then one comes on that just makes you want to dance.
Emma Stone
#98. 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
#99. A great poet must have the ear of a wild Arab listening in the silent desert, the eye of a North American Indian tracing the footsteps of an enemy upon the leaves that strew the forest, the touch of a blind man feeling the face of a darling child.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
#100. The sheer act of listening speaks volumes that even a great speech can't communicate.
John C. Maxwell
