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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
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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
Center
Assuming
Becomes
Clear
Universe
Truth
Long
Individually
Never
Assume
More quotes by Thomas Merton
True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.
Thomas Merton
The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.
Thomas Merton
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!
Thomas Merton
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.
Thomas Merton
I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.
Thomas Merton
And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.
Thomas Merton
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
Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
Thomas Merton
Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.
Thomas Merton
The end of the world will be legal.
Thomas Merton
The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.
Thomas Merton
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.
Thomas Merton
A daydream is an evasion.
Thomas Merton
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
To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.
Thomas Merton
Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.
Thomas Merton
Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.
Thomas Merton
Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
Thomas Merton
Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.
Thomas Merton
I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand but it is my shortcut to your soul.
Thomas Merton
