Quote

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

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Thomas Merton
Age: 53 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Catholic Priest
Essayist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Theologian
Trappist Cistercian Monk
Writer
Thomas Feverel Merton
Father Louis
Love
Otherwise
Twist
Fit
Twists
Relation
Reflecting
Image
Twisted
Beginning
Unconditional
Relationship
Perfectly
Spiritual
Spirituality
Find
Reflection
Imaging

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.
Thomas Merton
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For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self YOU have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted : And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son's self ... and it is He Who Presents me to You.
Thomas Merton
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When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago.
Thomas Merton
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There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Thomas Merton
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Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.
Thomas Merton
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Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Thomas Merton
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I am earth, earth My heart's love Bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air In which my own appointed place Field and valley Stand reflected
Thomas Merton
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We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation
Thomas Merton
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We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
Thomas Merton
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The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?
Thomas Merton
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A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
Thomas Merton
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You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer.
Thomas Merton
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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
Thomas Merton
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This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.
Thomas Merton
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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.
Thomas Merton
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I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.
Thomas Merton
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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
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Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.
Thomas Merton
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Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and this pure love is a delicate plant that grows best where there is plenty of time for it to mature
Thomas Merton
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It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
Thomas Merton