Quote

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

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
Life
Eyes
Within
Eye
Marrow
Death
Reacting
Someone
Chill
Light
Center
Heart
Clearly
Kind
Wisdom

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.
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One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.
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The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
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The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
Thomas Merton
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Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love every moment of existence is a grace.
Thomas Merton
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Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
Thomas Merton
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His justice is the love that gives to each one of His creatures the gifts that His mercy has previously decreed. And His mercy is His love, doing justice to its own exigencies, and renewing the gift which we had failed to accept.
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Love is the door to eternity.
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And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
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Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.
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One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.
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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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
Thomas Merton
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People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.
Thomas Merton
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As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I consider myself a saint? How can I consider myself a contemplative? For the self I bother about does not really exist, never will, never did except in my own imagination.
Thomas Merton
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Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.
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It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
Thomas Merton
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God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!
Thomas Merton
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Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
Thomas Merton