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A daydream is an evasion.

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
Daydream
Evasion
Daydreaming

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.
Thomas Merton
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Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
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Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.
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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.
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The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of a certain type of Christian thought has seriously impaired this capacity, which nonviolence must recover.
Thomas Merton
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Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.
Thomas Merton
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The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.
Thomas Merton
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We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.
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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
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For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.
Thomas Merton
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True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.
Thomas Merton
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
Thomas Merton
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For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?
Thomas Merton
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
Thomas Merton
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It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
Thomas Merton
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If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
Thomas Merton
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Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
Thomas Merton
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Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.
Thomas Merton
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
Thomas Merton
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Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.
Thomas Merton