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A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

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
Problems
Problem
May
Without
Verges
Always
Verge
Life
Hopeless
Literally
Despair

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Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.
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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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A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions, is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of choice when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.
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Life reveals itself to us only in so far as well live it.
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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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And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.
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Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.
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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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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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The end of the world will be legal.
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There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.
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The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
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The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.
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The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.
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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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In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.
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Love is the door to eternity.
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This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.
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There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
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