Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
THOMAS MERTONA man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
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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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A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
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Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
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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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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.
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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
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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.
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If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
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We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
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May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
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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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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.
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For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be.
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A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
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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.
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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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We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.
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No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
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Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
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You are made in the image of what you desire.
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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
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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