For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.
THOMAS MERTONYou 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.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.
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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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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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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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If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.
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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
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Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
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Our real journey in life is interior.
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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
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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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Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.
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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
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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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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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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.
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A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.
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The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
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What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?
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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
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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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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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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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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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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