We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
THOMAS MERTONTo say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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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.
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It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.
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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
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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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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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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?
THOMAS MERTON -
Weaknesses and deficiencies play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.
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Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.
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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.
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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.
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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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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