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If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.
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
Love
Overcome
Simplicity
Overcoming
Loved
Fear
Firsts
First
Must
Sincerely
More quotes by Thomas Merton
Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.
Thomas Merton
We do not exist for ourselves.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
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
There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Thomas Merton
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
Thomas Merton
Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
Thomas Merton
....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.
Thomas Merton
Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.
Thomas Merton
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
The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
Thomas Merton
The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer
Thomas Merton
Love is an intensification of life.
Thomas Merton
The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
Thomas Merton
The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation: that which is All, and which therefore is no limited or individual thing: The All is no-thing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be All.
Thomas Merton
The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!
Thomas Merton
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.
Thomas Merton
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.
Thomas Merton
