Quote

People are reluctant to talk about old age and death because they are afraid of emotion, and they willingly avoid the things they feel most emotional about, though these are the very things they most need to talk about.

Paul Tournier

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Paul Tournier
Age: 88 †
Born: 1898
Born: May 12
Died: 1986
Died: October 7
Physician
Physician Writer
Genève
Death
Reluctant
Need
Avoid
Feel
Afraid
Emotional
Feels
Emotion
Needs
Talk
Things
Though
People
Age
Willingly

More quotes by Paul Tournier

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The really important thing in life is not the avoidance of mistakes, but the obedience of faith. By obedience, the man is led step by step to correct his errors, whereas nothing will ever happen to him if he doesn't get going.
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Let us not seek to bring religion to others, but let us endeavor to live it ourselves.
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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.
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Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the subject's vitality.
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At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.
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Woe to the man who tries to remain objective and to maintain a wide perspective: every one will label him as an enemy.
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We do not posses God. We find him periodically.
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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.
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Sickness may be the solemn occasion of God's intervention in a person's life.
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Your manner of life now is already determining your life in those years of old age and retirement, without your realizing it even, and perhaps without your giving enough thought to it. One must therefore prepare oneself for retirement.
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The price that has to be paid for finding truly personal life is a very high one. It is a price in terms of the acceptance of responsibility. And the awareness of responsibility inevitably leads either to despair or to confession and grace.
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Our task is to live our personal communion with Christ with such intensity as to make it contagious.
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Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.
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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.
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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.
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...the highest sign of friendship is that of giving another the privilege of sharing your inner thought.
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