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.
THOMAS MERTONThe beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
THOMAS MERTON -
The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.
THOMAS MERTON -
No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
THOMAS MERTON -
Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.
THOMAS MERTON -
When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.
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In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
THOMAS MERTON -
The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
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Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
THOMAS MERTON -
Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.
THOMAS MERTON -
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
THOMAS MERTON -
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?
THOMAS MERTON -
Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
THOMAS MERTON -
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.
THOMAS MERTON -
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
THOMAS MERTON -
May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
THOMAS MERTON