W. H. Auden Quotes

Let go of your mind and then be mindful. Close your ears and listen!

The best thing anybody ever told me about acting - and I think it's probably true for life, generally - is listen. You've really got to watch, and you've really got to listen. Not see and hear.

You wish to see; listen. Hearing is a step toward Vision.

Our task is to listen to the news that is always arriving out of silence.

I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough.

To listen to the silence, wherever you are, is an easy and direct way of becoming present.

You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.

Learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.

It's a wonderful thing to perceive the world and to interact with it and with other people and nature from that deep place of utter stillness, where the compulsion to immediately label and interpret whatever arises around you is no longer there.

If you look hard and long, you can find us. If you listen hard and long, you can hear any of us, call any of us that you wish.

To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold.

If you were only to listen, it becomes meditation. Without meditation you cannot hear. What is the meaning of meditation? Meditation exists only where mind is not; where the internal dialogue is gone.

To be aware of little, quiet things, you need to be quiet inside. A high degree of alertness is required. Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Listen to the silence. Listen to your life. Be present, not just think about what's going on next week, next month.

Live with all of your senses.

We cannot let another person into our hearts or minds unless we empty ourselves. We can truly listen to him or truly hear her only out of emptiness.

We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.

I've always felt that the truth is in the silence.

Don't underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along, listening to all the thing you can't hear, and not bothering.

Don't think too hard. Just be present, and things will reveal themselves.

When we turn on our observation capabilities, we become much more in the moment and much more powerful. Psychic powers have been known to develop from consistent practice of paying attention. It's available to us all. It's all in what we choose to practice.

I often have the feeling that acting is really not difficult, because all I do is I just listen. I just listen. I just listen to what there is. And if there's nothing, then I listen to nothing. If there's a chair, and it's empty, I listen to an empty chair, and I will respond to it.