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To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

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
Exactly
Proud
Reason
Everything
Must
Nothingness
Men
Opposite
Love
Opposites
Loves

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When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago.
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Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.
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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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Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.
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True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.
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We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
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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.
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Love is an intensification of life.
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Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
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Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.
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The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.
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It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.
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A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
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Love is the door to eternity.
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God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!
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Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.
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The only unhappiness is not to love God.
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Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God
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Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.
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