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.
THOMAS MERTONDo not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.
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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.
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Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
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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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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
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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.
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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
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To 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.
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We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.
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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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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.
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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?
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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.
THOMAS MERTON