Quote

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

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
Age
Error
Lying
Acts
Less
Errors
Makes
Mere
Human
Lies
Tainted
Humans
Wisdom
Cult
Whole
Pleasure
Devoted
Race
Selfishness

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.
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The goal of fasting is inner unity.
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The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
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Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to -- find out both the questions and the answers.
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May God prevent us from becoming right-thinking men-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
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Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
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It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!
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We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to like one another.
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Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.
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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
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Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
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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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If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.
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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
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Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.
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Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and this pure love is a delicate plant that grows best where there is plenty of time for it to mature
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Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.
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