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A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.

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
Theologian
Gentle
Humor
Sense
Savors
Part
Penitent
Anything
Detect
Alert
Pious

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Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
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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.
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I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.
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Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do.
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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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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.
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My life is ... a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though 1 were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing, but can fully depend on the love and protection of Him who guides me.
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Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.
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Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.
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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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We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.
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If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.
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Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
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Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost
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Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further responsibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God.
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We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.
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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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Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.
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Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.
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A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
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