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Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.
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
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More quotes by Thomas Merton
Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
Thomas Merton
Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
Thomas Merton
I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand but it is my shortcut to your soul.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
A daydream is an evasion.
Thomas Merton
The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.
Thomas Merton
A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
Thomas Merton
The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation: that which is All, and which therefore is no limited or individual thing: The All is no-thing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be All.
Thomas Merton
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.
Thomas Merton
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas Merton
We love the things we pretend to laugh at.
Thomas Merton
Love is an intensification of life.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.
Thomas Merton
Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.
Thomas Merton
When ambition ends, happiness begins.
Thomas Merton
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
Thomas Merton
In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.
Thomas Merton