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 MERTONIt 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.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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Our real journey in life is interior.
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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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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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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.
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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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The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
THOMAS MERTON -
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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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
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No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.
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In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.
THOMAS MERTON -
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 MERTON -
I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity. I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.
THOMAS MERTON -
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.
THOMAS MERTON -
We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
THOMAS MERTON