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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

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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
Whole
Keen
Love
Based
Life
Awareness
Compassion
Purpose
Idea
Ideas
Live

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.
Thomas Merton
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
Thomas Merton
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When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.
Thomas Merton
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The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
Thomas Merton
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The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.
Thomas Merton
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Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
Thomas Merton
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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
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Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.
Thomas Merton
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I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.
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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Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
Thomas Merton
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The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
Thomas Merton
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There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.
Thomas Merton
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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!
Thomas Merton
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Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.
Thomas Merton
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The biggest disease in North America is busyness.
Thomas Merton
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Our real journey in life is interior.
Thomas Merton
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What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
Thomas Merton