Quote

When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat when we see children in a moment when they are really children.

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
Moments
Awakening
Night
Birds
Starlit
Children
Bird
Migrating
Really
Awareness
Grove
Rest
Newness
Alone
Descending
Chance
Awakened
Moment
Autumn

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.
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Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
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The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ.
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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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Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
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Love is the door to eternity.
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O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.
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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
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The least of the work of learning is done in classrooms.
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I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
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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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Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
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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.
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Love is not a mere emotion or sentiment. It is the lucid and ardent responses of the whole person to a value that is revealed to him as perfect.
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For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.
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Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
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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.
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The problem today is that there are no deserts, only dude ranches.
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