Stephen Covey Heart Quotations

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity.

Empathic listening is so powerful because it gives you accurate data to work with. Instead of projecting your own autobiography and assuming thoughts, feelings, motives and interpretation, you're dealing with the reality inside another person's head and heart. You're listening to understand. You're focused on receiving the deep communication of another human soul.

'In empathic listening you listen with your ears, but you also, and more importantly, listen with you eyes and with your heart. You listen for feeling, for meaning. You listen for behaviour. You use your right brain as well as your left. You sense, you intuit, you feel.' ... 'You have to open yourself up to be influenced'.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important. They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II...Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management.

Every person in the organization must change inside their hearts and minds, so that they themselves become principle centred.

You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is.

At the core, there is one simple, overarching reason why so many people remain unsatisfied in their work and why most organisations fail to draw out the greatest talent, ingenuity, and creativity of their people and never become truly great, enduring organisations. It stems from an incomplete paradigm of who we are - our fundamental view of human nature. The fundamental reality is, human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four-dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.

Too many vacations that last too long, too many movies, too much TV, too much video game playing - too much undisciplined leisure time in which a person continually takes the course of least resistance gradually wastes a life. It ensures that a person's capacities stay dormant, that talents remain undeveloped, that the mind and spirit become lethargic and that the heart remains unfulfilled.

Prepare your mind and heart before you prepare your speech . What we say may be less important than how we say it.

Our greatest joy and our greatest pain comes in our relationships with others.

Free your heart from hatred - forgive. Free your mind from worries - most never happen. Live simply and appreciate what you have. Give more. Expect less.

It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another thing not to admit it. People will forgive mistakes, because mistakes are usually of the mind, mistakes of judgment. But people will not easily forgive the mistakes of the heart, the ill intention, the bad motives, the prideful justifying cover-up of the first mistake.

One of the best ways to educate our hearts is to look at our interaction with other people, because our relationships with others are fundamentally a reflection of our relationship with ourselves.

Someone once inquired of a Far Eastern Zen master, who had a great serenity and peace about him no matter what pressures he faced, "How do you maintain that serenity and peace?" He replied, "I never leave my place of meditation." He meditated early in the morning and for the rest of the day, he carried the peace of those moments with him in his mind and heart.

The heart and soul of loving yourself is integrity and the peace of conscience it inspires.

The person who is truly effective has the humility and reverence to recognize his own perceptual limitations and to appreciate the rich resources available through interaction with the hearts and minds of other human beings.

People and their managers are working so hard to be sure things are done right, that they have hardly have time to decide if they are doing the right things.

Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe this is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds.

Develop all four intelligences. PQ (physical intelligence) which represents 70 trillion cells that fight disease and digest your breakfast. IQ (intellectual intelligence) EQ (emotional intelligence) the sensing and wisdom of the heart - - and SQ (spiritual intelligence) having to do with meaning, purpose and integrity around your selected value system and your believed source. When combined, they change the world for good.

The deepest hunger of [a child's] human heart is to be understood, for understanding implicitly affirms, validates, recognizes and appreciates the intrinsic worth of another.

If we know how to listen to our own heart, we can listen to the hearts of others.

Consult the wisdom of your heart as well as your mind.

Conscience connects us with the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom of the heart.

When people have a real sense of legacy, a sense of mattering, a sense of contribution, it seems to tap into the deepest part of their heart and soul. It brings out the best and subordinates the rest.

Intrinsic security doesn't come from what other people think of us or how they treat us. It doesn't come from our circumstance or out position. It comes from within. It comes from accurate paradigms and correct principles deep in our own mind and heart. It comes from inside-out congruence, from living a life of integrity in which our daily habits reflect our deepest values.

If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them? ... Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2 [Begin with the end in mind].

Human beings are not things needing to be motivated and controlled; they are four dimensional - body, mind, heart, and spirit.