Listen or thy tongue will keep thee deaf.

The proverb warns that excessive talking can prevent genuine understanding. If your “tongue” is always active—interrupting, arguing, or rehearsing what to say next—you become “deaf” to what others are actually communicating. The line also implies a moral discipline: listening is not passive but a chosen restraint, a way of making room for knowledge, counsel, and relationship. In many oral cultures, wisdom is associated with attentiveness and measured speech; the saying distills that ethic into a sharp paradox—speech can function like a kind of self-imposed deafness when it crowds out receptivity.