Quote

For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self YOU have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted : And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son's self ... and it is He Who Presents me to You.

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
False
Son
Longer
Father
Wanted
Come
Self
Sinful
Real
Presents

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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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In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.
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We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.
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The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.
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The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
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Our real journey in life is interior.
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Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.
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My life is ... a mystery which I do not attempt to really understand, as though 1 were led by the hand in a night where I see nothing, but can fully depend on the love and protection of Him who guides me.
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The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
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The meaning of life is found in openness to being and being present in full awareness.
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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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Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.
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Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
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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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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
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The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.
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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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To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
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