Quote

Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.

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
Stills
Comment
Care
Cares
Still
Reputation
Need
Sea
Needs
Lucky
Halo
Wind
Halos
Longer
Drowned
Away
Blew

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If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
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The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68
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To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.
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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
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Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.
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One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendour that is all around us.
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Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
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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?
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The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
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A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.
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We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
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Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.
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O God, my God, the night has values that the day never dreamed of.
Thomas Merton
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A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
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I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may meanI myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.
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Love is the door to eternity.
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The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!
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There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.
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Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.
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The meaning of life is found in openness to being and being present in full awareness.
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