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The only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to all his illusions about the world.

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
Way
Men
Succumb
Love
Illusions
World
Serve
Illusion
Simply
Modern
Right

More quotes by Thomas Merton

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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
Thomas Merton
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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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Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice.
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The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.
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We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!
Thomas Merton
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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
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There is not true intimacy between souls who do not know how to respect one another's solitude.
Thomas Merton
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A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
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I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand but it is my shortcut to your soul.
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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.
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Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost
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O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.
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God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!
Thomas Merton
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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.
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This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.
Thomas Merton
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The goal of fasting is inner unity.
Thomas Merton
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The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?
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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In an age where there is much talk about being yourself, I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.
Thomas Merton
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The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.
Thomas Merton