Paul Tournier Quotes

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart.

Listening is not merely not talking, though even that is beyond most of our powers; it means taking a vigorous, human interest in what is being told us.

Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them.

There’s a difference between listening passively and listening aggressively. To listen with your heart, you have to listen actively.

If I listen long enough, the person will generally come up with an adequate solution.

Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond. Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very beings. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking our words more seriously and discovering their true selves.

Many people may listen, but few people actually hear.

It taught him how to listen -- how to listen with a quiet heart and a waiting soul, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgment, without opinion.

You can practice deep listening in order to relieve the suffering in us, and in the other person. That kind of listening is described as compassionate listening. You listen only for the purpose of relieving suffering in the other person.

So when you are listening to somebody, completely, attentively, then you are listening not only to the words, but also to the feeling of what is being conveyed, to the whole of it, not part of it.

Listening is not just hearing what someone tells you word for word. You have to listen with a heart. I don't want that to sound touchy-feely; it is not. It is very hard work.

Sometimes people just need to feel heard, and being an actor has taught me to really listen.

Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe.

Everybody talks, nobody listens. Good listeners are as rare as white crows.

Listening to something is an act of surrender.

We should all know this: that listening is not talking; [it] is the gifted and great role and the imaginative role. And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective, and learns more and does more good. And so try listening. Listen to your wife, your husband, your father, your mother, your children, your friends; to those who love you and those who don't, to those who bore you, to your enemies. It will work a small miracle. And perhaps a great one.

Listening is everything. Listening is the whole deal. That's what I think. And I mean that in terms of before you work, after you work, in between work, with your children, with your husband, with your friends, with your mother, with your father. It's everything. And it's where you learn everything.

When you listen, you learn, You absorb like a sponge - and your life becomes so much better than when you are just trying to be listened to all the time.

Listening is more than being quiet. Listening is much more than silence. Listening requires undivided attention. The time to listen is when someone needs to be heard. The time to deal with a person with a problem is when he has the problem. The time to listen is the time when our interest and love are vital to the one who seeks our ear, our heart, our help, and our empathy.

Deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continuing to listen with compassion. Because you know that listening like that, you give that person a chance to suffer less.

We all really need to listen to each other, including to the boring bits.

A way of looking at you that told you she was listening, that she understood all you were saying, and all you weren't.

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.

Listening is the key to total concentration. You listen as the character would listen, closing the door on everything else. Then you are ready to respond.

What I hear all the time is to stop and listen. When you do a scene 30 times, and know the lines, you stop listening. The point is to listen, that's the only thing that can make it real.