Quote

One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendour that is all around us.

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
Ordinary
Around
Come
Beginning
Splendour
Important
Value
Interior
Things
Alive
Interiors
Life
Beauty
Neglected
Ability
Respond
Values
Elements
Reality

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.
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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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In an age where there is much talk about being yourself, I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.
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If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.
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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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As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I consider myself a saint? How can I consider myself a contemplative? For the self I bother about does not really exist, never will, never did except in my own imagination.
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The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
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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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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
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To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with God above sense and experience in the darkness of a pure and perfect love.
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To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.
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Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?
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May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
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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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We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to like one another.
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A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
Thomas Merton
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You are made in the image of what you desire.
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The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.
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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.
Thomas Merton