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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.

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
Times
Revolutions
Lives
Conversion
Many
Transformation
Leads
Endless
Inner
Series
Conversions
Revolution
Converted

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.
Thomas Merton
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Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.
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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
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To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.
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The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.
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The problem today is that there are no deserts, only dude ranches.
Thomas Merton
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Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.
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The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.
Thomas Merton
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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
Thomas Merton
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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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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.
Thomas Merton
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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.
Thomas Merton
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
Thomas Merton
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton
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And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.
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a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.
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Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.
Thomas Merton
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Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38
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.
Thomas Merton
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We love the things we pretend to laugh at.
Thomas Merton