Mindful Listening, Speech, and Silence: Quotations for Reflection and Discussion
published 3/17/25; updated 9/19/25
Photo by Etienne Boulanger on Unsplash
by Catharine Hannay, founder of MindfulTeachers.org
Continuing the series of Quotations for Teaching Mindfulness and Compassion, here are a variety of perspectives on intentional listening, thoughtful speech, and the power of silence.
Teachers, please note:
I don’t necessarily recommend giving this whole list to your students—I like to provide a lot of options so you can choose what’s most appropriate for your particular context.
I’ve included links to book titles so you can see more information about the sources of these quotes. (I don’t accept any paid links or advertising.)
Scroll to the bottom of the post for questions that can be used for personal reflection or as prompts for discussion and writing.
Quotations about Listening
“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.”
André Gide
“In an age when we witness so much of one another’s lives in real time online, we are dying to be seen. In an age when we have the ability, maybe the imperative, to constantly share our stories, we are starving for someone to listen.”
Brian Sonia-Wallace, The Poetry of Strangers, p. 284-285
“Usually, what we call ‘a good listener’ is someone with skillfully polished indifference.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, p. 16
“Real listening can’t happen unless we have a sincere desire to understand what we’re hearing. And that’s not an easy thing to manage, because it requires us to suspend judgment even when we’re feeling frustrated or scared or impatient or bored […]
The paradox of listening is that by relinquishing power—the temporary power of speaking, asserting, knowing—we become more powerful. When you stop talking, stop preaching, and listen, here’s what happens:
-People can trust you.
-You acquire useful information. […]
-When people feel heard, they are willing to listen.”
Amy Cuddy, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges
“Sometimes our intimates are listened to the least carefully of all. We know them so well, we feel we know what they have to say. We interrupt them, finishing their sentences for them, but not always accurately. We don’t really know their unspoken thoughts. […]
Select an intimate to listen to. Allow yourself patience to hear them out. Are you startled by some of what they say? Jot yourself a note: ‘I didn’t realize that.’”
Julia Cameron, The Listening Path, p. 92
“We need to know the limits to our capacity for compassionate listening and figure out when to protect ourselves when necessary. We also need to distinguish between a conversation in which the other person is in real pain, and a non-conversation in which chronic reactivity and negativity keep spilling over in our direction.”
Harriet Lerner, The Dance of Connection, p. 214
“What roadblocks to listening do you face? See if any of the following statements describe times when it’s been hard for you to lend an ear.
-I can’t really listen when someone is trying to persuade, proselytize, or compete with me.
-I can’t listen when I’m feeling upset or angry.
-I can’t listen when I strongly disagree with the other person’s point of view.
-I can’t listen when I feel criticized, unheard, or disrespected.”
Donald Altman, One-Minute Mindfulness
“[…] cutting short someone’s grief with facile words of condolence because we find the sorrow too painful to bear.”
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise, p. 124
Michael Longo: Do we understand each other?
Charlie: I heard you.
Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorcese
Quotations about Speech
“a masculine reluctant-agreement grunt”
Patricia Briggs, Winter Lost, p. 306
“The imparting of this news was invariably accompanied by gasps of dismay and amazement followed by an overpowering wish to find someone else to tell it to and enjoy the dismay and amazement all over again.”
Angie Sage, Physik, p. 384
“On an occasion of this kind, it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one’s mind. It becomes a pleasure.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Ernest
“I try not to spend too much time on tittle-tattle, however pleasurable it may seem at the time. It never does anyone any good and it makes you feel cheap afterwards.”
James Runcie, Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death
“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”
Bertrand Russell, On Education
"Each little fault of temper and each social defect
In my erring fellow-creatures, I endeavour to correct...
To ev'rybody's prejudice I know a thing or two;
I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do.
But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can,
Yet ev'rybody says I'm such a disagreeable man!
And I can't think why!"
"If You Give Me Your Attention," Princess Ida, Gilbert and Sullivan
“‘Can I be brutally honest with you about something?’ […]
Whenever somebody promises a brutally honest opinion, what they are actually saying is, ‘Please give me the opportunity to take you down!’ […]
If I’m going to open myself to you, then I need to know that I can trust you, and that you understand me, and that you genuinely want me to succeed, and—most of all—that you are capable of being compassionate with your honesty.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, Oprah Magazine, January 2017, p. 28-29
“I don’t like anything that’s brutal, including honesty. Honesty is the best policy, but honesty that’s motivated by shame, anger, fear or hurt is not ‘honesty.’ It’s shame, anger, fear or hurt disguised as honesty. Just because something is accurate or factual doesn’t mean it can’t be used in a destructive manner.”
Brené Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn’t), p. 171
“Truth can be costly, but in the end it never falls short of value for the price paid.”
Ellis Peters, The Confession of Brother Haluin, p. 158
“How you say something is more likely to get you in trouble than what you say.”
Charles Baxter, The Art of Subtext, p. 89
“Language is almost all we have left of action in the modern world. For many of us, at least, action has become what we say: the moral life is lived out in what we say more often than what we do.”
poet Marie Howe, quoted in Becoming Wise, by Krista Tippett
“Talk out of the part of yourself that can love, instead of just the part that wants to be loved.”
David Foster Wallace, quoted in Good Prose, by Kidder & Todd, p. 135
“By all means, avoid words—threats, complaints, justification, narratives, reframing, attempts to win arguments, supplications; avoid words!”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms, p. 135
Quotations about Silence
“She was glad then for the length of the room and its high ceilings, for a smaller room could not have held the ensuing silence.”
Laura Lippman, Baltimore Blues, p. 145
“[…] the tiny silence that comes after a loud noise, before the regular, pushed-aside noises move back in.”
Barbara Neely, Blanche Among the Talented Tenth
“He sits back and looks me in the eye. The silence is interminable. the kind that makes everything said afterward a thousand times louder.”
Tracy Deonn, Legendborn, p. 381
“Not all silence sounds the same. The cushioned silence of my favorite library sounds different from a bamboo grover at dusk when the tourists have gone. A gap in a nourishing conversation sounds different from a gap in a wild storm. […] Whole worlds wait inside the spaces between sounds, but we have to listen carefully to locate them.”
Beth Kempton, The Way of the Fearless Writer, p. 113:
“There are different kinds of silence, as many as there are intensions and reasons behind it. It can be gentle and peaceful. Risky and brave. Angry and punishing. Thoughtful and wise. Intimate. Loving. Restorative. Repetitive. Reflective. Sacred or profane. It can be used to honor or to shame. To diminish or empower.”
Anne D. LeClaire, Listening Below the Noise, p. 61-62
“She had known three types of silence in relationships. There was passive-aggressive silence, obviously, there was we-no-longer-have-anything-to-say silence, and then there was the silence that Eduardo and she seemed to have cultivated. The silence of not needing to talk. Of just being together, of together-being. The way you could be happily silent with yourself.”
Matt Haig, The Midnight Library, p. 210
“Talk is talk; silence is wisdom.”
Algonquin saying, quoted in The Lost Art of Silence, by Sarah Anderson, p. 205
“He said nothing; seldom do those who are silent make mistakes.”
Neil Gaiman, Norse Mythology, p. 45
“I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.”
Xenocrates
“If I tell them, they will consider me a fool; if I am silent, I cannot escape my conscience.”
St Francis of Assisi, quoted in Eager to Love: The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi by Fr. Richard Rohr, p. 153:
Questions for Reflection and Discussion
(If you use these questions in a class or group: As with any other discussion about personal topics, please respect your students' wishes about how much they choose to share.)
Which is your favorite quote? Why?
Are there any quotations you don’t agree with? Why?
What type of silence have you experienced? (gentle? angry? shaming? empowering?) What are your most and least favorite types of silence? Why?
Do you feel comfortable being silent around your friends or family? Why or why not?
How do you feel about gossip (or ‘tittle-tattle’)? Do you think it’s hurtful to others, a harmless pastime, or a way to connect with your friends?
What does ‘brutal honesty’ mean to you? Do you think it’s good or bad? Why?
Would you rather have someone tell you something negative, not say anything, or lie to spare your feelings?
Have you ever heard or used a ‘masculine reluctant-agreement grunt’? Do you think that (most) women and girls tend to talk more than (most) men and boys? Why do you think this is/isn’t true?
When do you find it most challenging to express yourself? When do you find it most challenging to listen to others?
Have you ever regretted what you’ve said? Have you ever regretted remaining silent? Have you ever regretted listening or not listening to someone? What do you wish you’d said or done instead?
Related Posts
There are many more quotations and resources on mindful communication and relationships here at MindfulTeachers.org, including the following posts: