Paul Tournier Quotes

In order to really understand, we need to listen, not reply. We need to listen long and attentively. In order to help anybody to open his heart we have to give him time, asking only a few questions, as carefully as possible in order to help him better explain his experience.

I am convinced that nine out of every ten persons seeing a psychiatrist do not need one. They need someone who will love them with God's love...and they will get well.

Christian faith does not involve repressing one's anxiety in order to appear strong. On the contrary, it means recognizing one's weakness, accepting the inward truth about oneself, confessing one's anxiety, and still to believe, that is to say that the Christian puts his trust not in his own strength, but in the grace of God.

It is quite clear that between love and understanding there is a very close link...He who loves understands, and he who understands loves. One who feels understood feels loved, and one who feels loved feels sure of being understood.

We are nearly always longing for an easy religion, easy to understand and easy to follow; a religion with no mystery, no insoluble problems,no snags; a religion that would allow us to escape from our miserable human condition; a religion in which contact with God spares us all strife, all uncertainty,all suffering and all doubt; in short, a religion without a cross

God leads us step by step, from event to event. Only afterward, as we look back over the way we have come and reconsider certain important moments in our lives in the light of all that has followed them, or when we survey the whole progress of our lives, do we experience the feeling of having been led without knowing it, the feeling that God has mysteriously guided us.

Everything that is worthwhile in life is scary. Choosing a school, choosing a career, getting married, having kids - all those things are scary. If it is not fearful, it is not worthwhile.

The adventurous life is not one exempt from fear, but on the contrary, one that is lived in full knowledge of fears of all kinds, one in which we go forward in spite of our fears.

There are two things we cannot do alone. One is to be married and the other is to be a Christian.

The experience of being in between-between the time we leave home and arrive at our destination; between the time we leave adolescence and arrive at adulthood; between the time we leave doubt and arrive at faith. It is like the time when a trapeze artist lets go the bars and hangs in midair, ready to catch another support: it is a time of danger, of expectation, of uncertainty, of excitement, or extraordinary aliveness.

No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person.

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.

Acceptance of one's life has nothing to do with resignation; it does not mean running away from the struggle. On the contrary, it means accepting it as it comes, with all the handicaps of heredity, of suffering, of psychological complexes and injustices.

Life can become once more a grand adventure if we will surrender it to god. He brings one adventure to an end, only to open another to us. With him we must be ready for anything.

That is what marriage really means; helping one another to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life.

At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.

Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either.

Our task is to live our personal communion with Christ with such intensity as to make it contagious.

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

...the highest sign of friendship is that of giving another the privilege of sharing your inner thought.

The worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong.

We are always looking for a grand program of action full of great ideas, when the thing is to begin by obeying the little ideas.

Marriage teaches you loyalty, forbearance, self-restraint, meekness, and a great many other things you wouldn't need if you had stayed single.

Let us not seek to bring religion to others, but let us endeavor to live it ourselves.

Listen to all the conversations of our world, between nations as well as between individuals. They are, for the most part, dialogues of the deaf.