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Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

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
Never
Accepting
Conclusion
Coming
Obligation
Already
Fully
Wisdom
Finally
Firsts
Ambition
First
Accept
Surpassed
Right
Highest
Surpass
Way
Unless
Fulfill

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverance for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
Thomas Merton
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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.
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That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.
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Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.
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The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
Thomas Merton
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
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What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
Thomas Merton
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The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Thomas Merton
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The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
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To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.
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And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.
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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In an age where there is much talk about being yourself, I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.
Thomas Merton
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
Thomas Merton
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I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.
Thomas Merton
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Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
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Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.
Thomas Merton
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Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.
Thomas Merton