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 MERTONBefore we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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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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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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Our real journey in life is interior.
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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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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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Perhaps I am stronger than I think.
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The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds.
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What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
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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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Self-conquest is really self-surrender. Yet before we can surrender ourselves we must become ourselves. For no one can give up what he does not possess.
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Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
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We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.
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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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For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
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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.
THOMAS MERTON