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.
THOMAS MERTONFear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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Our real journey in life is interior.
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Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
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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 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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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
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Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.
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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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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