How can we communicate love? I think three things are involved. We must reach out to a person, make contact. We must listen with the heart, be sensitive to the other’s needs. We must respond in a language that the person can understand. Many of us do all the talking. We must learn to listen and to keep on listening.

–Princess Pale Moon

I’m glad I understand that while language is a gift, listening is a responsibility.          –Nikki Giovanni

It’s a mistake to think we listen only with our ears. It’s much more important to listen with the mind, the eyes, the body, and the heart. Unless you truly want to understand the other person, you’ll never be able to listen.

–Mark Herndon

All speech, written or spoken, is a dead language, until it finds a willing and prepared hearer.

–Robert Louis Stevenson

The greatest motivational act one person can do for another is to listen.          –Roy E. Moody

I’ve never learned anything while I was talking.

–Larry King

Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.

—Plutarch

Listen to everything, forget much, correct little.

–Pope John XXIII

No one really listens to anyone else, and if you try it for a while you’ll see why.

–Mignon McLaughlin

The only way to entertain most people is to listen to them.

–Elbert Hubbard

Though the journey through conflict may seem perilous, we each have available to us a power to ease our way. This power quells anger, builds bridges of understanding, and wins us a hearing with even the most stubborn person. It is freely accessible to us and requires only that we let go of the need to be right (although some might find this a steep price). This greatly underused power is that of listening.

–Gary Harper

You seldom listen to me, and when you do you don’t hear, and when you do hear you hear wrong, and even when you hear right you change it so fast that it’s never the same.

–Marjorie Kellogg