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We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

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.
THOMAS MERTON

Country Enemy Myself Peace Prayer War
Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.
THOMAS MERTON

Eyes God Goodness Happiness Heart Joy Peace
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
Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.
THOMAS MERTON

Act Action Spiritual Way
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

God Himself Journey Right
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
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
When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.
THOMAS MERTON

God Imagination Mindset Nature Reality Silence Tongue Yourself
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
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
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
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
THOMAS MERTON

Humility Pride Reality
Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.
THOMAS MERTON

Better God Nature Spiritual Tree Wind
Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who loves us, who is near to us.
THOMAS MERTON

God Himself Love Prayer
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

Enough Need Ourselves Silence Voice
No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
THOMAS MERTON

Knowledge Man Wisdom Wrong

We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

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We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

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