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I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.

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
Asks
Thorns
Like
Wound
Surrounded
Wounds
Questions
Thoughts
Longer
Wisdom
Penance

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
Thomas Merton
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I came with the notion of perhaps saying something for monks and to monks of all religions because I am supposed to be a monk. ... My dear brothers, WE ARE ALREADY ONE. BUT WE IMAGINE THAT WE ARE NOT. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are
Thomas Merton
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How far have I to go to find you in whom I have already arrived.
Thomas Merton
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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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You are made in the image of what you desire.
Thomas Merton
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Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?
Thomas Merton
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If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.
Thomas Merton
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Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
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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Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
Thomas Merton
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The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.
Thomas Merton
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Thomas Merton
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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.
Thomas Merton
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And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
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
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The end of the world will be legal.
Thomas Merton
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For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.
Thomas Merton
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None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.
Thomas Merton
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Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.
Thomas Merton