Quote

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.

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
Life
Greater
Respond
Action
Surrender
Ever
Hearts
Matter
Necessary
Real
Journey
Heart
Growth
Deepening
Never
Grace
Interior
Love
Creative
Interiors

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.
Thomas Merton
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In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.
Thomas Merton
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To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.
Thomas Merton
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If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
Thomas Merton
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The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.
Thomas Merton
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Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38
Thomas Merton
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The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer
Thomas Merton
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
Thomas Merton
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
Thomas Merton
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Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.
Thomas Merton
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Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
Thomas Merton
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Humility is the surest sign of strength.
Thomas Merton
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We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
Thomas Merton
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a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.
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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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
Thomas Merton
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Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Thomas Merton
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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
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