Quote

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.

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
Spiritual
Block
Facts
Discipline
Firsts
Realizing
Self
Greatest
First
Existence
Powerful
Actuality
Getting
Stumbling
Fact
Consists

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
Thomas Merton
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If you have love you will do all things well.
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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
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We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
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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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When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat when we see children in a moment when they are really children.
Thomas Merton
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The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
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I came with the notion of perhaps saying something for monks and to monks of all religions because I am supposed to be a monk. ... My dear brothers, WE ARE ALREADY ONE. BUT WE IMAGINE THAT WE ARE NOT. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are
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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.
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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The goal of fasting is inner unity.
Thomas Merton
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Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
Thomas Merton
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It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!
Thomas Merton
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Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.
Thomas Merton
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Humility is the surest sign of strength.
Thomas Merton
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I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
Thomas Merton
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If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
Thomas Merton
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For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self YOU have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted : And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son's self ... and it is He Who Presents me to You.
Thomas Merton
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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.
Thomas Merton
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What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
Thomas Merton