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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.

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.
THOMAS MERTON

Avoid Beginning End Hurt Philosophy Suffering Try Yourself
Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.
THOMAS MERTON

Breathe Existence Gift God Grace Moments
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
THOMAS MERTON

Bad Failure Greatness Man Success
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.
THOMAS MERTON

Beginning Image Love Ourselves Perfection Reflection
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

Alone Life Live Ourselves True
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.
THOMAS MERTON

Live People Reach Success Wall Wrong
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
THOMAS MERTON

God Himself Ideas Ourselves
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.
THOMAS MERTON

Country Enemy Myself Peace Prayer War
Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
THOMAS MERTON

Compassionate Interdependent Philosophy
May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
THOMAS MERTON

God Man Ourselves Perfection Right Thinking Vice
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 MERTON

Acceptance Desire Generosity Goodness Greatness Life Live Love Ourselves Self Love
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

Beginning Division Freedom Himself Man Uncomfortable
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live.
THOMAS MERTON

Beginning Creation Difference Happiness Joy Live Philosophy Yourself
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
THOMAS MERTON

Deep God Ourselves Peace Spiritual
Our real journey in life is interior.
THOMAS MERTON

Journey Life Ourselves Reality
Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
THOMAS MERTON

Alive Beautiful Ordinary See

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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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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Popular Authors

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