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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
May
Without
Verges
Always
Verge
Life
Hopeless
Literally
Despair
Problems
Problem

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There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.
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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!
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For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
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The biggest disease in North America is busyness.
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The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
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Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.
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Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. I am gift. All that I am is something that's given, and given freely. Being doesn't cost anything. There's no price tag, no strings attached.
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It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not what he ought to be. If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we do away with him altogether.
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We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation
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Life reveals itself to us only in so far as well live it.
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The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
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Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.
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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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The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist....It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.
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I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand but it is my shortcut to your soul.
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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 God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
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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.
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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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A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.
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