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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

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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
Find
Despair
Air
Walking
Instead
Brink
Perfect
Achieved
Hope
Edge
Spiritual
Edges
Fall
Falling

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We are already ONE. We just think we are separate.
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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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We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God
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If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
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Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.
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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
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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 only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
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The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ.
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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.
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In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.
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Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.
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Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.
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How far have I to go to find you in whom I have already arrived.
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If there was no other proof of the infinite patience of God, a very good one could be found in His toleration of the pictures that are painted of Him.
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I am beginning to realize that sanity is no longer a value or an end in itself. The sanity of modern man is about as useful to him as the huge bulk and muscles of the dinosaur. If he were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of his absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be a possibility of his surviv
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Humility is the surest sign of strength.
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Love is the door to eternity.
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Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.
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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
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