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May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

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
Silence
Grace
Grows
Printed
Peace
Neglect
May
Center
Fail
Failing
Grow

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist....It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.
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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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Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
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Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between 'things' and 'God' as if God were another thing and as if creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God.
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To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.
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Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
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One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.
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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.
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Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.
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The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done
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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.
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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
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There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
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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
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If you have love you will do all things well.
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To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.
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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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Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.
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If we examine ourselves carefully we shall see most of us have an enormous amount of unfinished business...We have to be free so that we can just step across the line and that's it. That is what real freedom is.
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I have only one desire, and that is the desire for solitude-to disappear into God, to be submerged in His peace, to be lost in the secret of His Face.
Thomas Merton