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For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

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
Humans
Opinion
Well
Wisdom
Called
Devils
Light
Saints
Earth
Saint
May
Devil
Wells
Darkness
Human
Ones

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We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
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It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!
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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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May God prevent us from becoming right-thinking men-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
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Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
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Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
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How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?
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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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They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.
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To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.
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Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.
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To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.
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I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
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The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer
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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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O God, my God, the night has values that the day never dreamed of.
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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.
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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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There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.
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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
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