Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
THOMAS MERTONLearn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.
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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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Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
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Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
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From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.
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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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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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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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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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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace and your soul in the joy of Christ.
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Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed – but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
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A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
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Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
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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.
THOMAS MERTON