Brenda Ueland Quotes

Listening is as important as talking. If you're a good listener, people often compliment you for being a good conversationalist.

Few people...have had much training in listening. The training of most oververbalized professional intellectuals is in the opposite direction. Living in a competitive culture, most of us are most of the time chiefly concerned with getting our own views across, and we tend to find other people's speeches a tedious interruption of the flow of our own ideas.

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

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.

There is a craft and a power in listening.

Listen twice as much as you speak.

Many people may listen, but few people actually hear.

Proper listening is the foundation of proper living.

True listening is another way of bringing stillness into the relationship. When you truly listen to someone, the dimension of stillness arises and becomes an essential part of the relationship.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.

Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything.

There’s a difference between listening passively and listening aggressively. To listen with your heart, you have to listen actively.

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 our words more seriously and discovering their true selves.

Sometimes you have to be silent to be heard.

The key ingredient in family communication is listening, really listening.

Listening takes practice, and it takes patience. But I promise, if you listen, your story will be better for it.

What I hear all the time is to stop and listen. When you do a scene 30 times, and know the lines, you stop listening. The point is to listen, that's the only thing that can make it real.

If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don't.

Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.

In life we listen to other people. Listen with varying degrees of concentration and attention, right? Actors must learn to listen in a different way.

I've learned to listen in all aspects of life, in all relationships and communications. The biggest lesson is to listen.

A good listener is very nearly as attractive as a good talker. You cannot have a beautiful mind if you do not know how to listen.

I'm glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility. (U.S. poet and writer, 1943- )