Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.
THOMAS MERTONOur job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
THOMAS MERTON -
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
THOMAS MERTON -
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 MERTON -
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
THOMAS MERTON -
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.
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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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Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.
THOMAS MERTON -
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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Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
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The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
THOMAS MERTON -
When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.
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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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The 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.
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I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.
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Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.
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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
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When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.
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The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.
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Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
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Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
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In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
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We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
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If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
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The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
THOMAS MERTON -
You are made in the image of what you desire.
THOMAS MERTON