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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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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
Holy
Gives
Wisdom
Perfect
Father
Spirit
Giving
Easily
Men
Gift

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover.
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Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
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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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Imagination has the creative task of making symbols, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.
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Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.
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The meaning of life is found in openness to being and being present in full awareness.
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What do you want to want to be, anyway? I don't know I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic. What you should say--he told me--what you should say is that you want to be a saint.
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
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When ambition ends, happiness begins.
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The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.
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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
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Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.
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The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!
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The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
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The goal of fasting is inner unity.
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It seems to me that the darkness that has troubled you ... comes from one very serious source. Without wanting to be in conflict with the truth and with the will of God, we are actually going against God's will and His teaching.
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It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverance for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
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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.
Thomas Merton
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Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away from the noise and tension of modern life, at least for a little while, in order to relax their minds and wills and seek a blessed healing sense of inner unity, reconciliation, integration?
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