Quote

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

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
Self
Deeper
Need
Silence
Enough
Least
Needs
Called
Hermits
Heard
Enable
Voice
Occasionally
Lives
Solitude
Inspirational
Yoga

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
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The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds
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You are made in the image of what you desire.
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If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.
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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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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
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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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We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
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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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Imagination has the creative task of making symbols, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.
Thomas Merton
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He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.
Thomas Merton
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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.
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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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Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
Thomas Merton
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Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton
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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
Thomas Merton
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Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and this pure love is a delicate plant that grows best where there is plenty of time for it to mature
Thomas Merton