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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

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
Making
Around
Always
Life
Contemplative
Statues
Temptation
Wisdom

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Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
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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.
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People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
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The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order.
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Love is our true destiny.
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It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
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Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.
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Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
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While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.
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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.
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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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Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.
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He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
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Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.
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When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.
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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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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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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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