What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
THOMAS MERTONIt is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.
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No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
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How can I be sincere if I am constantly changing my mind to conform with the shadow of what I think others expect of me?
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Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
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Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
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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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We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.
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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.
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Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
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People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
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Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
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In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
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Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
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Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.
THOMAS MERTON