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.
Paul TournierRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love and understanding are deeply interconnected; to truly love someone, one must also strive to understand them.
This quote emphasizes the profound relationship between love and understanding. Paul Tournier suggests that love cannot exist in a vacuum without understanding; true love involves a deep comprehension of another person's feelings, thoughts, and experiences. When we understand someone, we are more capable of loving them authentically, and conversely, when we love, we are prompted to seek a greater understanding of the person we care for. This harmonious relationship fosters an environment where both individuals feel valued, connected, and confident in their bond.
Themes
LoveUnderstandingConnectionRelationshipsEmpathy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of empathy in relationships, one might quote Tournier to highlight the connection between love and understanding.
More from Paul Tournier
All quotes →What happens then is like what happens when we separate a jigsaw puzzle into its fuve hundred pieces: The over-all picture disappears. This is the state of modern medicine: It has lost the sense of the unity of man. Such is the price it has paid for its scientific progress. It has sacrificed art to science.
Paul TournierRead
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.
Paul TournierRead
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.
Paul TournierRead
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.
Paul TournierRead
The most tragic consequence of our criticism of a man is to block his way to humiliation and grace, precisely to drive him into the mechanisms of self justification and into his faults instead of freeing him from them. For him, our voice drowns the voice of God.
Paul TournierRead
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