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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.

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
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Human
Depends
Humans
Answers
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Questions

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.
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We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
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Our real journey in life is interior.
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....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.
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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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There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.
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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
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My spiritual goal is to one day walk into God and disappear.
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What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
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Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.
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A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.
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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
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And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.
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We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
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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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We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.
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Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.
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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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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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