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Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.

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
Needs
Waste
Uncommon
Things
Therefore
Defending
People
Concerned
Efforts
Longer
Reputation
Effort
Interests
Interest
Humble
Need
Humility
Great
Perfection

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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Our real journey in life is interior It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
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O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.
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And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
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A daydream is an evasion.
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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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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
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October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.
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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.
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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 in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
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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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For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
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If you have love you will do all things well.
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
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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.
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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.
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In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.
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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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Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life.
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Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.
Thomas Merton