Echoes we: listen!
We cannot stay,
As dewdrops glisten,
Then fade away. [ Shelley ]
The very shadows seem to listen. [ Anna Katharine Green ]
Then take me on your knee, mother;
And listen, mother of mine.
A hundred fairies danced last night.
And the harpers they were nine. [ Mary Howitt ]
Hail mildly, pleasing solitude.
Companion of the wise and good,
But from whose holy, piercing eye,
The herds of fools and villains fly;
Oh! how I love with thee to walk,
And listen to thy whispered talk,
Which innocence and truth imparts,
And meets the most obdurate hearts. [ Thomson ]
She listen'd with a flitting blush.
With downcast eyes, and modest grace,
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face. [ Coleridge ]
'Tis sweet to listen as the night winds creep
From leaf to leaf; 'tis sweet to view on high
The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. [ Byron ]
If you are wise, and prize your peace of mind,
Believe me true, nor listen to your Jealousy,
Let not that devil which undoes your sex,
That cursed curiosity seduce you
To hunt for needless secrets, which, neglected,
Shall never hurt your quiet, but once known
Shall sit upon your heart, pinch it with pain,
And banish sweet sleep forever from you. [ Rowe ]
Listen! O, listen!
Here ever hum the golden bees
Underneath full-blossomed trees.
At once with glowing fruit and flowers crowned. [ Lowell ]
Hear the mellow wedding bells.
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten golden notes,
And all in tune
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listen? while she gloats
On the moon! [ Poe ]
His eloquence is classic in its style,
Not brilliant with explosive coruscations
Of heterogeneous thoughts, at random caught.
And scattered like a shower of shooting stars,
That end in darkness: no; - his noble mind
Is clear, and full, and stately, and serene.
His earnest and undazzled eye he keeps
Fixed on the sun of Truth, and breathes his words
As easily as eagles cleave the air,
And never pauses till the height is won;
And all who listen follow where he leads. [ Mrs. Hale ]
Listen at a hole, and ye'll hear news o' yoursel'. [ Scotch Proverb ]
Listen at the hole and you will hear news of yourself. [ Proverb ]
Clever people never listen and stupid people never talk. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
Everybody gives advice: some listen to it; none apply it. [ Alfred Bougeart ]
Go forth under the open sky, and listen to nature's teaching. [ Bryant ]
A man of integrity will never listen to any reason against conscience. [ Horne ]
To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness. [ Confucius ]
Listen to yourself, and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God. [ Maya Angelou ]
I will listen to any one's convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself. [ Goethe ]
If you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse-like airs as carols. [ Bacon ]
If you would not have affliction visit you twice, listen at once to what it teaches. [ Burgh ]
When a woman invokes her reason, it is a sure sign that she will listen to her heart.
Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. [ George Eliot ]
If one plays good music people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk. [ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest ]
Who listens once will listen twice; her heart be sure is not of ice, and one refusal no rebuff. [ Byron ]
If one could only teach the English how to talk and the Irish how to listen society would be quite civilized. [ Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband ]
Women are pictures, men are problems: if you want to know what a woman really means, look at her, don't listen to her. [ Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance ]
The extreme pleasure we take in talking of ourselves should make us fear that we give very little to those who listen to us. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
The men who convey and those who listen to calumnies should, if I could have my way, all hang, the talebearers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears. [ Plautus ]
I never listen to calumnies, because, if they are untrue, I run the risk of being deceived, and if they are true, of hating persons not worth thinking about. [ Montesquieu ]
No one loves to tell of scandal except to him who loves to hear it. Learn, then, to rebuke and check the detracting tongue by showing that you do not listen to it with pleasure. [ St. Jerome ]
Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to be played before you enter upon him. But he brings his music, to which who listen had need bring docile thoughts and purged ears. [ Lamb ]
Learn, O student, the true wisdom. See yon bush aflame with roses, like the burning bush of Moses. Listen, and thou shalt hear, if thy soul be not deaf, how from out it, soft and clear, speaks to thee the Lord Almighty. [ Hafiz ]
If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns. [ Chapin ]
In dreams we are true poets; we create the persons of the drama; we give them appropriate figures, faces, costumes; they are perfect in their organs, attitudes, manners; moreover they speak after their own characters, not ours; and we listen with surprise to what they say. [ Emerson ]
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us
- that's what they sing. [ O. Henry, A Tempered Wind ]
O God, whom the world misjudges, and whom everything declares! listen to the last words that my lips pronounce! If I have wandered, it was in seeking Thy law. My heart may go astray, but it is full of Thee! I see, without alarm, eternity appear; and I can not think that a God who has given me life, that a God who has poured so many blessings on my days, will, now that my days are done, torment me for ever! [ The last prayer of Voltaire ]
Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us. [ Lowell ]