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Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.

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
Violence
Thought
Wordless
Essentially
Rational
Communication
Begin
Broken

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Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
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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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Love is our true destiny.
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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.
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It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
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Love is its own reward.
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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
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My spiritual goal is to one day walk into God and disappear.
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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
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Our real journey in life is interior.
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Humility is the surest sign of strength.
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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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Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.
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The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
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If we examine ourselves carefully we shall see most of us have an enormous amount of unfinished business...We have to be free so that we can just step across the line and that's it. That is what real freedom is.
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The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
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The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
Thomas Merton