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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
Sense
Savors
Part
Penitent
Anything
Detect
Alert
Pious
Theologian
Gentle
Humor

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Life reveals itself to us only in so far as well live it.
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One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.
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The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
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Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.
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The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.
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Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.
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The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
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Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.
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Love is our true destiny.
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If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
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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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To be truly Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal standard of truth, but also and above all to be able to enter into the problems and the joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all.
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
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Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.
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True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.
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Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love every moment of existence is a grace.
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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.
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O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
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