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The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.

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
Journey
Wisdom
Geographical
Acting
Pilgrimage
Best
Meanings
Without
Symbolic
Outer
Signs
Inner

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Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.
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Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God
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Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.
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It seems to me that the darkness that has troubled you ... comes from one very serious source. Without wanting to be in conflict with the truth and with the will of God, we are actually going against God's will and His teaching.
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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.
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There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.
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The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover.
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It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.
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Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, transformed consciousness.
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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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Whose silence are you?
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Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to -- find out both the questions and the answers.
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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.
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People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.
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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
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Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.
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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 only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to all his illusions about the world.
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Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.
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To Serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one's neighbor.
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