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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.

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
Purpose
Lives
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More quotes by Thomas Merton

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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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There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.
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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
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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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Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.
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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.
Thomas Merton
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The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that is as great as it is consoling: that of bringing into the world and forming young souls capable of happiness and love, souls capable of sanctification and transformation in Christ.
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Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.
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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
Thomas Merton
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Humility is the surest sign of strength.
Thomas Merton
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We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
Thomas Merton
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We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God
Thomas Merton
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This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.
Thomas Merton
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The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.
Thomas Merton
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Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.
Thomas Merton
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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
Thomas Merton
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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
Thomas Merton
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The camera does not know what it takes it captures materials with which you reconstruct, not so much what you saw as what you thought you saw. Hence the best photography is aware, mindful, of illusion and uses illusion, permitting and encouraging it - especially unconscious and powerful illusions that are not usually admitted on the scene.
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.
Thomas Merton
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The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
Thomas Merton