Dante Alighieri Quotes

Talking over the things which you have read with your companions fixes them on the mind.

I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.

If you don't listen, you're never gonna learn.

But communication is two-sided - vital and profound communication makes demands also on those who are to receive it... demands in the sense of concentration, of genuine effort to receive what is being communicated.

If you talk, you only repeat something that you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something that you don't know.

Be brief, that the mind may catch thy precepts, and the more easily retain them.

Keep an open mind; it's the only way new things can get in.

If you're not listening, you're not learning.

The more intelligible a thing is, the more easily it is retained in the memory, and counterwise, the less intelligible it is, the more easily we forget it.

It is no learning to understand what you do not retain.

We don't really understand something until we have forgotten it.

Good listeners believe they can learn something from everyone.

I have a low opinion of books: they are piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention.

The secret of a good memory is attention, and attention to a subject depends upon our interest in it. We rarely forget that which has made a deep impression on our minds.

I can never remember things I didn't understand in the first place.

He who listens to truth is not less than he who utters truth.

You heard me. You ain't blind.

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

Great genial power, one would almost say, consists in not being original at all; in being altogether receptive; in letting the world do all, and suffering the spirit of the hour to pass unobstructed through the mind.

Opinions need a willing ear.

Whatever you teach, be brief; what is quickly said, the mind readily receives and faithfully retains, everything superfluous runs over as from a full vessel.

No man discovers anything big if he does not make himself small.

When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

That I can read and be happy while I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left--something dim and inaccurate--but still something sufficient to preserve the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.

I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears when that One steps near and begins to speak.