I wait with listening ears. [ Virgil ]

Night, sable goddess! from her ebon throne,
In rayless majesty, now stretches forth
Her leaden sceptre over a slumbering world.
Silence, how dead! and darkness, how profound!
Nor eye, nor listening ear, an object finds;
Creation sleeps. 'Tis as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and nature made a pause;
An awful pause! prophetic of her end. [ Young ]

Dark the Night, with breath all flowers.
And tender broken voice that fills
With ravishment the listening hours, -
Whisperings, wooings.
Liquid ripples, and soft ring-dove cooings
In low-toned rhythm that love's aching stills!
Dark the night
Yet is she bright.
For in her dark she brings the mystic star.
Trembling yet strong, as is the voice of love.
From some unknown afar. [ George Eliot ]

And evermore the waters worship God;
And bards and prophets tune their mystic lyres
While listening to the music of the waves! [ Mrs. Hale ]

The crackling embers on the hearth are dead;
The indoor note of industry is still;
The latch is fast; upon the window-sill
The small birds wait not for their daily bread;
The voiceless flowers - how quietly they shed
Their nightly odours; - and the household rill
Murmurs continuous dulcet sounds that fill
The vacant expectation, and the dread
Of listening night. [ Hartley Coleridge ]

Whenever he speaks, Heaven, how the listening throng
Dwell on the melting music of his tongue!
His arguments are emblems of his mien,
Mild but not faint, and forcing, though serene:
And when the power of eloquence he'd try,
Here lightning strikes you, there soft breezes sigh. [ Garth ]

One should be slow in listening to criminal accusations. [ Publius Syrus ]

I cannot hear what you say for listening to what you are. [ Emerson ]

Were we as eloquent as angels, we should please some more by listening than by talking. [ Colton ]

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to. [ Zimmermann ]

Nobody knows who may be listening; say nothing which you would not wish put in the daily paper. [ Spurgeon ]

We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word. [ Emerson ]

Were we as eloquent as angels, we would please some men, some women, and some children much more by listening than by talking. [ Colton ]

Paradise, as described by the theologians, seems to me too musical: I confess that I should be incapable of listening to a cantata that would last ten thousand years. [ T. Gautier ]

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 ]

Candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, the sailor perceives these decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day; and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all; and they give plenary and brief without listening to confession. [ Ruskin ]