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Our real journey in life is interior.

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
Interior
Interiors
Conformity
Journey
Real

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.
Thomas Merton
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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.
Thomas Merton
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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.
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 will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer.
Thomas Merton
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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.
Thomas Merton
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You are made in the image of what you desire.
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.
Thomas Merton
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Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
Thomas Merton
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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
Thomas Merton
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What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
Thomas Merton
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Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.
Thomas Merton
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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
Thomas Merton
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We must suffer. Our five sense are dulled by inordinate pleasure. Penance makes them keen, gives them back their natural vitality, and more. Penance clears the eye of conscience and of reason. It helps think clearly, judge sanely. It strengthens the action of our will.
Thomas Merton
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Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.
Thomas Merton
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Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.
Thomas Merton
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To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.
Thomas Merton
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Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another thing and as if creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.
Thomas Merton
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Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.
Thomas Merton
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For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness
Thomas Merton