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Persons Are Not Known By Intellect Alone, Not By Principles Alone, But Only By Love. It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are. It Is Only This Realization That Can Open To Us The Real Nature Of Our Duty, And Of Right Action.

-Thomas Merton

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Persons Are Not Known

Thomas Merton

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Persons Are Not Known By Intellect Alone, Not By Principles Alone, But Only By Love. It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are. It Is Only This Realization That Can Open To Us The Real Nature Of Our Duty, And Of Right Action.

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Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already I Am.

A Tree Gives Glory To God By Being A Tree. For In Being What God Means It To Be It Is Obeying Him.... The More A Tree Is Like Itself, The More It Is Like Him.

If A Man Is To Live, He Must Be All Alive, Body, Soul, Mind, Heart, Spirit.

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Consequently, The Truth Of God Lives In Our Souls More By The Power Of Superior Moral Courage Than By The Light Of An Eminent Intelligence. Indeed, Spiritual Intelligence Itself Depends On The Fortitude And Patience With Which We Sacrifice Ourselves For The Truth, As It Is Communicated To Our Lives Concretely In The Providential Will Of God

The First Step Toward Finding God, Who Is Truth, Is To Discover The Truth About Myself: And If I Have Been In Error, This First Step To Truth Is The Discovery Of My Error.

Today The Artist Has Inherited The Combined Functions Of Hermit, Pilgrim, Prophet, Priest, Shaman, Sorcerer, Soothsayer, Alchemist.

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.

The Married Man And The Mother Of A Christian Family, If They Are Faithful To Their Obligations, Will Fulfill A Mission That Is As Great As It Is Consoling: That Of Bringing Into The World And Forming Young Souls Capable Of Happiness And Love, Souls Capable Of Sanctification And Transformation In Christ.

Silence Has Many Dimensions. It Can Be A Regression And An Escape, A Loss Of Self, Or It Can Be Presence, Awareness, Unification, Self-discovery. Negative Silence Blurs And Confuses Our Identity, And We Lapse Into Daydreams Or Diffuse Anxieties. Positive Silence Pulls Us Together And Makes Us Realize Who We Are, Who We Might Be, And The Distance Between These Two.

What Do You Want To Want To Be, Anyway?" "i Don't Know; I Guess What I Want To Be Is A Good Catholic." "what You Should Say"--he Told Me--"what You Should Say Is That You Want To Be A Saint.

The Danger Of Education, I Have Found, Is That It So Easily Confuses Means With Ends. Worse Than That, It Quite Easily Forgets Both And Devotes Itself Merely To The Mass Production Of Uneducated Gradtuates - People Literaly Unfit For Anything Except To Take Part In An Elaborate And Completely Artificial Charade Which They And Their Contemporaries Have Conspired To Call "life".

Love Is A Special Way Of Being Alive.

Not Only Does Silence Give Us A Chance To Understand Ourselves Better, To Get A Truer And More Balanced Perspective On Our Own Lives In Relation To The Lives Of Others: Silence Makes Us Whole If We Let It. Silence Helps Draw Together The Scattered And Dissipated Energies Of A Fragmented Existence.

Weaknesses And Deficiencies . . . Play A Most Important Part In All Our Lives. It Is Because Of Them That We Need Others And Others Need Us. We Are Not All Weak In The Same Spots, And So We Supplement And Complete One Another, Each One Making Up In Himself For The Lack In Another.

It Is Both Dangerous And Easy To Hate Man As He Is Because He Is Not What He Ought To Be. If We Do Not First Respect What He Is We Will Never Suffer Him To Become What He Ought To Be: In Our Impatience We Do Away With Him Altogether.

It Is True That We Are Called To Create A Better World. But We Are First Of All Called To A More Immediate And Exalted Task: That Of Creating Our Own Lives.

Be Still: There Is No Longer Any Need Of Comment. It Was A Lucky Wind That Blew Away His Halo With His Cares, A Lucky Sea That Drowned His Reputation.

I Just Remember Their Kindness And Goodness To Me, And Their Peacefulness And Their Utter Simplicity. They Inspired Real Reverence, And I Think, In A Way, They Were Certainly Saints. And They Were Saints In That Most Effective And Telling Way: Sanctified By Leading Ordinary Lives In A Completely Supernatural Manner, Sanctified By Obscurity, By Usual Skills, By Common Tasks, By Routine, But Skills, Tasks, Routine Which Received A Supernatural Form From Grace Within.

Contemplation Is The Loving Sense Of This Life, This Presence And This Eternity.

How Do You Expect To Arrive At The End Of Your Own Journey If You Take The Road To Another Man's City?

If You Want To Study The Social And Political History Of Modern Nations, Study Hell.

We Refuse Love, And Reject Society, In So Far As It Seems, In Our Own Perverse Imagination, To Imply Some Obscure Kind Of Humiliation

I Seek To Speak To You, In Some Way, As Your Own Self. Who Can Tell What This May Meani Myself Do Not Know, But If You Listen, Things Will Be Said That Are Perhaps Not Written In This Book. And This Will Be Due Not To Me But To The One Who Lives And Speaks In Both.

The Peace Produced By Grace Is A Spiritual Stability Too Deep For Violence — It Is Unshakeable

The Devil Is No Fool. He Can Get People Feeling About Heaven The Way They Ought To Feel About Hell. He Can Make Them Fear The Means Of Grace The Way They Do Not Fear Sin. And He Does So, Not By Light But By Obscurity, Not By Realities But By Shadows; Not By Clarity And Substance, But By Dreams And The Creatures Of Psychosis. And Men Are So Poor In Intellect That A Few Cold Chills Down Their Spine Will Be Enough To Keep Them From Ever Finding Out The Truth About Anything.

Duty Does Not Have To Be Dull. Love Can Make It Beautiful And Fill It With Life.

In Louisville, At The Corner Of Fourth And Walnut, In The Center Of The Shopping District, I Was Suddenly Overwhelmed With The Realization That I Loved All Those People, That They Were Mine And I Theirs, That We Could Not Be Alien To One Another Even Though We Were Total Strangers.

Charity Is Without Fear: Having Given All That It Has, It Has Nothing Left To Lose.

Merely To Resist Evil With Evil By Hating Those Who Hate Us And Seeking To Destroy Them, Is Actually No Resistance At All. It Is Active And Purposeful Collaboration In Evil That Brings The Christian Into Direct And Intimate Contact With The Same Source Of Evil And Hatred Which Inspires The Acts Of His Enemy. It Leads In Practice To A Denial Of Christ And To The Service Of Hatred Rather Than Love.

It Is A Glorious Destiny To Be A Member Of The Human Race, Now I Realize What We All Are . If Only They [people] Could All See Themselves As They Really Are I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other At The Center Of Our Being Is A Point Of Nothingness Which Is Untouched By Sin And By Illusions, A Point Of Pure Truth This Little Point Is The Pure Glory Of God In Us. It Is In Everybody.

Solitude And Silence Teach Me To Love My Brothers For What They Are, Not For What They Say.

What Can We Gain By Sailing To The Moon If We Cannot Cross The Abyss That Separates Us From Ourselves?

Stop Asking Yourself Questions That Have No Meaning. Or If They Have, You'll Find Out When You Need To -- Find Out Both The Questions And The Answers.

For The Sinful Self Is Not My Real Self, It Is Not The Self You Have Wanted For Me, Only The Self That I Have Wanted : And I No Longer Want This False Self. But Now, Father, I Come To You In Your Own Son's Self ... And It Is He Who Presents Me To You.

Then It Was As If I Suddenly Saw The Secret Beauty Of Their Hearts, The Depths Of Their Hearts Where Neither Sin Nor Desire Nor Self-knowledge Can Reach, The Core Of Their Reality, The Person That Each One Is In God's Eyes. If Only They Could See Themselves As They Really Are. If Only We Could See Each Other That Way All The Time, There Would Be No More War, No More Hatred, No More Cruelty, No More Greed . . . I Suppose The Big Problem Would Be That We Would Fall Down And Worship Each Other.

Our Technological Society Has No Longer Any Place In It For Wisdom That Seeks Truth For Its Own Sake, That Seeks The Fullness Of Being, That Seeks To Rest In An Intuition Of The Very Ground Of All Being. Without Wisdom, The Apparent Opposition Of Action And Contemplation, Of Work And Rest, Of Involvement And Detachment, Can Never Be Resolved.

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.

We Do Not Exist For Ourselves.

We Become Contemplatives When God Discovers Himself In Us.

Reason Is In Fact The Path To Faith, And Faith Takes Over When Reason Can Say No More.

It Is In The Ordinary Duties And Labors Of Life That The Christian Can And Should Develop His Spiritual Union With God.

For The Birds There Is Not A Time That They Tell, But The Point Vierge Between Darkness And Light, Between Being And Nonbeing. You Can Tell Yourself The Time By Their Waking, If You Are Experienced. But That Is Your Folly, Not Theirs.

As Long As I Am Content To Know That He Is Infinitely Greater Than I, And That I Cannot Know Him Unless He Shows Himself To Me, I Will Have Peace, And He Will Be Near Me And In Me, And I Will Rest In Him.

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 Only Influence That Can Really Upset The Injustice And Iniquity Of Men Is The Power That Breathes In The Christian Tradition, Renewing Our Participation In The Life That Is The Light Of Men.

The Gift Of Love Is The Gift Of The Power And Capacity To Love, And Therefore, To Give Love With Full Effect Is Also To Receive It. So Love Can Only Be Kept By Being Given Away, And It Can Only Be Given Perfectly When It Is Also Received.

Law Of Attraction

For Every Gain In Deep Certitude There Is A Corresponding Growth Of Superficial "doubt." This Doubt Is By No Means Opposed To Genuine Faith, But It Mercilessly Examines And Questions The Spurious "faith" Of Everyday Life, The Human Faith Which Is Nothing But The Passive Acceptance Of Conventional Opinion.

Love Is Not A Mere Emotion Or Sentiment. It Is The Lucid And Ardent Responses Of The Whole Person To A Value That Is Revealed To Him As Perfect.

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.

In The Spiritual Life There Is No Such Thing As An Indifference To Love Or Hate.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself.

The Sacred Attitude Is, Then, One Of Deep And Fundamental Respect For The Real In Whatever New Form It May Present Itself.

Our Real Journey In Life Is Interior.

We Are Already One. We Just Think We Are Separate.

Life Reveals Itself To Us Only In So Far As Well Live It.

To Consider Persons And Events And Situations Only In The Light Of Their Effect Upon Myself Is To Live On The Doorstep Of Hell.

The Lord Did Not Create Suffering. Pain And Death Came Into The World With The Fall Of Man. But After Man Had Chosen Suffering In Preference To The Joys Of Union With God, The Lord Turned Suffering Itself Into A Way By Which Man Could Come To The Perfect Knowledge Of God.

Pardon All Runners, All Speechless, Alien Winds, All Mad Waters. Pardon Their Impulses, Their Wild Attitudes, Their Young Flights, Their Reticence. When A Message Has No Clothes On How Can It Be Spoken.

I Am Beginning To Realize That "sanity" Is No Longer A Value Or An End In Itself. The "sanity" Of Modern Man Is About As Useful To Him As The Huge Bulk And Muscles Of The Dinosaur. If He Were A Little Less Sane, A Little More Doubtful, A Little More Aware Of His Absurdities And Contradictions, Perhaps There Might Be A Possibility Of His Survival.

A Life That Is Without Problems May Literally Be More Hopeless, Than One That Always Verges On Despair.

Art Is Not An End In Itself. It Introduces The Soul Into A Higher Spiritual Order, Which It Expresses And In Some Sense Explains.

In Meditative Prayer, One Thinks And Speaks Not Only With The Mind And Lips, But In A Certain Sense With One's Whole Being... All Good Meditative Prayer Is A Conversation Of Our Entire Self To God.

We Must Make The Choices That Enable Us To Fulfill The Deepest Capacities Of Our Real Selves.

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Let Me Rest In Your Will And Be Silent. Then The Light Of Your Joy Will Warm My Life. Its Fire Will Burn In My Heart And Shine For Your Glory. This Is What I Live For. Amen, Amen.

If Nothing That Can Be Seen Can Either Be God Or Represent Him To Us As He Is, Then To Find God We Must Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Seen And Enter Into Darkness. Since Nothing That Can Be Heard Is God, To Find Him We Must Enter Into Silence. Since God Cannot Be Imagined, Anything Our Imagination Tells Us About Him Is Ultimately A Lie And Therefore We Cannot Know Him As He Really Is Unless We Pass Beyond Everything That Can Be Imagined And Enter Into An Obscurity Without Images And Without The Likeness Of Any Created Thing.

The Only True Liberty Is In The Service Of That Which Is Beyond All Limits, Beyond All Definitions, Beyond All Human Appreciation: That Which Is All, And Which Therefore Is No Limited Or Individual Thing: The All Is No-thing, For If It Were To Be A Single Thing Separated From All Other Things, It Would Not Be All.

People Have No Idea What One Saint Can Do: For Sanctity Is Stronger Than The Whole Of Hell.

The Meaning Of Life Is Found In Openness To Being And "being Present" In Full Awareness.

O God, Teach Me To Be Satisfied With My Own Helplessness In The Spiritual Life. Teach Me To Be Content With Your Grace That Comes To Me In Darkness And That Works Things I Cannot See. Teach Me To Be Happy That I Can Depend On You. To Depend On You Should Be Enough For An Eternity Of Joy. To Depend On You By Itself Ought To Be Infinitely Greater Than Any Joy Which My Own Intellectual Appetite Could Desire.

A Daydream Is An Evasion.

The Only Thing To Seek In Contemplative Prayer Is God; And We Seek Him Successfully When We Realize That We Cannot Find Him Unless He Shows Himself To Us, And Yet At The Same Time That He Would Not Have Inspired Us To Seek Him Unless We Had Already Found Him.

I Suppose What Makes Me Most Glad Is That We All Recognize Each Other In This Metaphysical Space Of Silence And Happening, And Get Some Sense, For A Moment, That We Are Full Of Paradise Without Knowing It.

The Devil Makes Many Disciples By Preaching Against Sin. He Convinces Them That The Great Evil Of Sin, Induces A Crisis Of Guilt By Which “god Is Satisfied," And After That He Lets Them Spend The Rest Of Their Lives Meditating On The Intense Sinfulness And Evident Reprobation Of Other Men.

If It So Happened That I Had Once Written A Best-seller, This Was A Pure Accident, Due To Inattention And Naivete, And I Would Take Very Good Care Never To Do The Same Again. If I Had A Message For My Contemporaries, I Said, It Was Surely This: Be Anything You Like, Be Madmen, Drunks, And Bastards Of Every Shape And Form, But At All Costs Avoid One Thing: Success.

Man Was Made For The Highest Activity, Which Is, In Fact, His Rest.

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.

The Psychological Impotence Of Our Enraged Generation Must Be Traced To The Overwhelming Accusation Of Insincerity Which Every Man And Woman Has To Confront, In The Depths Of His Own Soul, When He Seeks To Love Merely For His Own Pleasure.and Yet The Men Of Our Time Do Not Love With Enough Courage To Risk Even Discomfort Or Inconvenience.

For Pride, Which Is The Inordinate Attribution Of Goods And Values And Glories To One's Own Contingent Self, Cannot Exist Where There Is No Contingent Self To Which Anything Can Be Attributed.

The Gate Of Heaven Is Everywhere.

Gates Of Heaven

One Of The Strange Laws Of The Contemplative Life Is That In It You Do Not Sit Down And Solve Problems: You Bear With Them Until They Somehow Solve Themselves. Or Until Life Solves Them For You.

Contemplative Life

If A Writer Is So Cautious That He Never Writes Anything That Cannot Be Criticized, He Will Never Be Able To Write Anything That Can Be Read. If You Want To Help Other People You Have Got To Make Up Your Mind To Write Things That Some Men Will Condemn.

The Only Right Way: To Love And Serve The Man Of The Modern World, But Not Simply To Succumb, With Him, To All His Illusions About The World.

Solitude Is A Way To Defend The Spirit Against The Murderous Din Of Our Materialism.

Life Consists In Learning To Live On One's Own, Spontaneous, Freewheeling: To Do This One Must Recognize What Is One's Own-be Familiar And At Home With Oneself. This Means Basically Learning Who One Is, And Learning What One Has To Offer To The Contemporary World, And Then Learning How To Make That Offering Valid.

Despair Is The Absolute Extreme Of Self-love. It Is Reached When A Person Deliberately Turns His Back On All Help From Anyone Else In Order To Taste The Rotten Luxury Of Knowing Himself To Be Lost

What Does It Mean To Know And Experience My Own “nothingness?” It Is Not Enough To Turn Away In Disgust From My Illusions And Faults And Mistakes, To Separate Myself From Them As If They Were Not, And As If I Were Someone Other Than Myself. This Kind Of Self-annihilati On Is Only A Worse Illusion, It Is A Pretended Humility Which, By Saying “i Am Nothing” I Mean In Effect “i Wish I Were Not What I Am.

The True Contemplative Is One Who Has Discovered The Art Of Finding Leisure Even In The Midst Of His Work, By Working With Such A Spirit Of Detachment And Recollection That Even His Work Is A Prayer

To Be Alone By Being Part Of The Universe-fitting In Completely To An Environment Of Woods And Silence And Peace. Everything You Do Becomes A Unity And A Prayer. Unity Within And Without.

Humility Is The Surest Sign Of Strength.

The Whole Function Of The Life Of Prayer Is, Then, To Enlighten And Strengthen Our Conscience So That It Not Only Knows And Perceives The Outward, Written Precepts Of The Moral And Divine Laws, But Above All Lives God's Law In Concrete Reality By Perfect And Continual Union With His Will.

To Be Truly Catholic Is Not Merely To Be Correct According To An Abstractly Universal Standard Of Truth, But Also And Above All To Be Able To Enter Into The Problems And The Joys Of All, To Understand All, To Be All Things To All.

It Is By Desiring To Grow In Love That We Receive The Holy Spirit, And The Thirst For More Charity Is The Effect Of This More Abundant Reception.

The God Of Peace Is Never Glorified By Human Violence.

By My Monastic Life And Vows I Am Saying No To All The Concentration Camps, The Aerial Bombardments, The Staged Political Trials, The Judicial Murders, The Racial Injustices, The Economic Tyrannies, And The Whole Socioeconomic Apparatus Which Seems Geared For Nothing But Global Destruction In Spite Of All Its Fair Words In Favor Of Peace.

Things That Are Good Are Good, And If One Is Responding To That Goodness One Is In Contact With A Truth From Which One Is Getting Something. The Truth Is Doing Us Good. The Truth Of The Sunshine, The Truth Of The Rain, The Truth Of The Fresh Air, The Truth Of The Wind In The Trees, These Are Truths. And They Are Always Accessible!

Before 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.

Some Of Us Need To Discover That We Will Not Begin To Live More Fully Until We Have The Courage To Do And See And Taste And Experience Much Less Than Usual... And For A Man Who Has Let Himself Be Drawn Completely Out Of Himself By His Activity, Nothing Is More Difficult Than To Sit Still And Rest, Doing Nothing At All. The Very Act Of Resting Is The Hardest And Most Courageous Act He Can Perform.

We Have What We Seek, It Is There All The Time, And If We Give It Time, It Will Make Itself Known To Us.

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice. It Demands Greater Heroism Than War. It Demands Greater Fidelity To The Truth And A Much More Perfect Purity Of Conscience.

Contemplation In The Age Of Auschwitz And Dachau, Solovky And Karaganda Is Something Darker And More Fearsome Than Contemplation In The Age Of The Church Fathers. For That Very Reason, The Urge To Seek A Path Of Spiritual Light Can Be A Subtle Temptation To Sin. It Certainly Is Sin If It Means A Frank Rejection Of The Burden Of Our Age, An Escape Into Unreality And Spiritual Illusion, So As Not To Share The Misery Of Other Men.

To Find Love I Must Enter Into The Sanctuary Where It Is Hidden, Which Is The Mystery Of God.

My Best Writing Has Always Been In Journals.

Modern Man Believes He Is Fruitful And Productive When His Ego Is Aggressively Affirmed, When He Is Visibly Active, And When His Action Produces Obvious Results.

We Assume That Others Are Receiving The Kind Of Appreciation We Want For Ourselves, And We Proceed On The Assumption That Since We Are Not Loveable As We Are, We Must Become Lovable Under False Pretenses, As If We Were Something Better Than We Are.

The Silence Of The Forest Is My Bride And The Sweet Dark Warmth Of The Whole World Is My Love, And Out Of The Heart Of That Dark Warmth Comes The Secret That Is Heard Only In Silence, But It Is The Root Of All The Secrets That Are Whispered By All The Lovers In Their Beds All Over The World.

To Be Grateful Is To Recognize The Love Of God In Everything.

To Be Ordinary Is Not A Choice: It Is The Usual Freedom Of Men Without Visions.

And It Is In This Darkness, When There Is Nothing Left In Us That Can Please Or Comfort Our Own Minds, When We Seem To Be Useless And Worthy Of All Contempt, When We Seem To Have Failed, When We Seem To Be Destroyed And Devoured, It Is Then That The Deep And Secret Selfishness That Is Too Close To Us For Us To Identify Is Stripped Away From Our Souls. It Is In This Darkness That We Find Liberty. It Is In This Abandonment That We Are Made Strong. This Is The Night Which Empties Us And Makes Us Pure.

... Nothing Resembles Reality Less Than The Photograph. Nothing Resembles Substance Less Than Its Shadow. To Convey The Meaning Of Something Substantial You Have To Use Not A Shadow But A Sign, Not The Limitation But The Image. The Image Is A New And Different Reality, And Of Course It Does Not Convey An Impression Of Some Object, But The Mind Of The Subject; And That Is Something Else Again.

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.

I Am Against War, Against Violence, Against Violent Revolution, For Peaceful Settlement Of Differences, For Nonviolent But Nevertheless Radical Changes. Change Is Needed, And Violence Will Not Really Change Anything: At Most It Will Only Transfer Power From One Set Of Bull-headed Authorities To Another.

O God, My God, The Night Has Values That The Day Never Dreamed Of.

Meditation Is One Of The Ways In Which The Spiritual Man Keeps Himself Awake.

Persons Are Not Known By Intellect Alone, Not By Principles Alone, But Only By Love. It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are. It Is Only This Realization That Can Open To Us The Real Nature Of Our Duty, And Of Right Action.

Saints Are What They Are Not Because Their Sanctity Makes Them Admirable To Others, But Because The Gift Of Sainthood Makes It Possible For Them To Admire Everyone Else.

The Problem Today Is That There Are No Deserts, Only Dude Ranches.

In Humility Is The Greatest Freedom. As Long As You Have To Defend The Imaginary Self That You Think Is Important, You Lose Your Peace Of Heart.

A Man Who Fails Well Is Greater Than One Who Succeeds Badly.

Do Not Depend On The Hope Of Results. You May Have To Face The Fact That Your Work Will Be Apparently Worthless And Even Achieve No Result At All, If Not Perhaps Results Opposite To What You Expect. As You Get Used To This Idea, You Start More And More To Concentrate Not On The Results, But On The Value, The Rightness, The Truth Of The Work Itself. You Gradually Struggle Less And Less For An Idea And More And More For Specific People. In The End, It Is The Reality Of Personal Relationship That Saves Everything.

One Has To Be Alone, Under The Sky, Before Everything Falls Into Place And One Finds His Or Her Own Place In The Midst Of It All. We Have To Have The Humility To Realize Ourselves As Part Of Nature.

You Will Never Be Able To Have Perfect Interior Peace And Recollection Unless You Are Detached Even From The Desire Of Peace And Recollection. You Will Never Be Able To Pray Perfectly Until You Are Detached From The Pleasures Of Prayer.

We Cannot Arrive At The Perfect Possession Of God In This Life, And That Is Why We Are Travelling And In Darkness. But We Already Possess Him By Grace, And Therefore In That Sense We Have Arrived And Are Dwelling In The Light. But Oh! How Far Have I To Go To Find You In Whom I Have Already Arrived!

Our Destiny Is To Live Out What We Think, Because Unless We Live What We Know, We Do Not Even Know It.

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.

The Whole World Has Risen In Christ... If God Is 'all In All,' Then Everything Is In Fact Paradise, Because It Is Filled With The Glory And Presence Of God, And Nothing Is Any More Separated From God.

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.

In Order To Settle Down In The Quiet Of Our Own Being We Must Learn To Be Detached From The Results Of Our Own Activity. We Must Be Content To Live Without Watching Ourselves Live, To Work With Expecting Immediate Reward, To Love Without An Instant Satisfaction, And To Exist Without Any Special Recognition. It Is Only When We Are Detached From Ourselves That We Can Be At Peace With Ourselves.

If There Was No Other Proof Of The Infinite Patience Of God, A Very Good One Could Be Found In His Toleration Of The Pictures That Are Painted Of Him.

The Only Trouble Is That In The Spiritual Life There Are No Tricks And No Shortcuts. Those Who Imagine That They Can Discover Spiritual Gimmicks And Put Them To Work For Themselves Usually Ignore God's Will And His Grace.

The Solution Of The Problem Of Life Is Life Itself. Life Is Not Attained By Reasoning And Analysis, But First Of All By Living. For Until We Have Begun To Live Our Prudence Has No Material To Work On. And Until We Have Begun To Fail We Have No Way Of Working Out Our Success.

True Happiness Is Not Found In Any Other Reward Than That Of Being United With God. If I Seek Some Other Reward Besides God Himself, I May Get My Reward But I Cannot Be Happy.

To Some Men Peace Merely Means The Liberty To Exploit Other People Without Fear Of Retaliation Or Interference. To Others Peace Means The Freedom To Rob Others Without Interruption. To Still Others It Means The Leisure To Devour The Goods Of The Earth Without Being Compelled To Interrupt Their Pleasures To Feed Those Whom Their Greed Is Starving. And To Practically Everybody Peace Simply Means The Absence Of Any Physical Violence That Might Cast A Shadow Over Lives Devoted To The Satisfaction Of Their Animal Appetites For Comfort And Pleasure.

It Is When We Love The Other, The Enemy, That We Obtain From God The Key To An Understanding Of Who He Is, And Who We Are.

A Man Can Radically Change His Life And Attain To A Deeper Meaning, A More Perfect Integration, A More Complete Fulfillment, A More Total Liberty Of Spirit Than Are Possible In The Routines Of A Purely Active Existence Centered On Money-making.

The Selfishness Of An Age That Has Devoted Itself To The Mere Cult Of Pleasure Has Tainted The Whole Human Race With An Error That Makes All Our Acts More Or Less Lies Against God.

Surrender Your Own Poverty And Acknowledge Your Nothingness To The Lord. Whether You Understand It Or Not, God Loves You, Is Present In You, Lives In You, Dwells In You, Calls You, Saves You And Offers You An Understanding And Compassion Which Are Like Nothing You Have Ever Found In A Book Or Heard In A Sermon.

Humble People Can Do Great Things With Uncommon Perfection Because They Are No Longer Concerned About Their Own Interests And Their Own Reputation, And Therefore They No Longer Need To Waste Their Efforts In Defending Them.

Finally I Am Coming To The Conclusion That My Highest Ambition Is To Be What I Already Am. That I Will Never Fulfill My Obligation To Surpass Myself Unless I First Accept Myself, And If I Accept Myself Fully In The Right Way, I Will Already Have Surpassed Myself.

Anxiety Is The Mark Of Spiritual Insecurity.

Our Minds Are Like Crows. They Pick Up Everything That Glitters, No Matter How Uncomfortable Our Nests Get With All That Metal In Them.

Peace Demands The Most Heroic Labor And The Most Difficult Sacrifice.

The Simplest And Most Effective Way To Sanctity Is To Disappear Into The Background Of Ordinary Every Day Routine.

Those Who Think They 'know' From The Beginning Will Never In Fact Come To Know Anything.

But It Certainly Is A Wonderful Thing To Wake Up Suddenly In The Solitude Of The Woods And Look Up At The Sky And See The Utter Nonsense Of Everything Including All The Solemn Stuff Given Out By Professional Asses About The Spiritual Life; And Simply To Burst Out Laughing, And Laugh And Laugh, With The Sky And The Trees Because God Is Not In Words, And Not In Systems, And Not In Liturgical Movements, And Not In "contemplation" With A Big "c," Or In Asceticism Or In Anything Like That, Not Even In The Apostolate.

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.

Even The Darkest Moments Of The Liturgy Are Filled With Joy, And Ash Wednesday, The Beginning Of The Lenten Fast, Is A Day Of Happiness, A Christian Feast.

The Pleasure Of A Good Act Is Something To Be Remembered - Not In Order To Feed Our Complacency But In Order To Remind Us That Virtuous Actions Are Not Only Possible And Valuable, But That They Can Become Easier And More Delightful And More Fruitful Than The Acts Of Vice Which Oppose And Frustrate Them.

Just Remaining Quietly In The Presence Of God, Listening To Him, Being Attentive To Him, Requires A Lot Of Courage And Know-how.

Every Other Man Is A Piece Of Myself, For I Am A Part And A Member Of Mankind.

Action Is The Stream, And Contemplation Is The Spring.

Imagination Has The Creative Task Of Making Symbols, Joining Things Together In Such A Way That They Throw New Light On Each Other And On Everything Around Them. The Imagination Is A Discovering Faculty, A Faculty For Seeing Relationships, For Seeing Meanings That Are Special And Even Quite New.

The Humble Person Receives Praise The Way A Clean Window Takes The Light Of The Sun. The Truer And More Intense The Light Is, The Less You See Of The Glass.

When You Reread Your Journal You Find Out That Your Newest Discovery Is Something You Already Found Out Five Years Ago.

In All His Acts God Orders All Things, Whether Good Or Evil, For The Good Of Those Who Know Him And Seek Him And Who Strive To Bring Their Own Freedom Under Obedience To His Divine Purpose. All That Is Done By The Will Of God In Secret Is Done For His Glory And For The Good Of Those Whom He Has Chosen To Share In His Glory.

Cupidity...takes Created Things For Ends In Themselves, Which They Are Not. The Will That Seeks Rest In Creatures For Their Own Sake Stops On The Way To Its True End, Terminates In A Value Which Does Not Exist, And Thus Frustrates All Its Deepest Capacities For Happiness And Peace.

No One Is So Wrong As The Man Who Knows All The Answers.

The Christian Life, And Especially The Contemplative Life, Is A Continual Discovery Of Christ In New And Unexpected Places.

Contemplative Life

We Must Be True Inside, True To Ourselves, Before We Can Know A Truth That Is Outside Us. But We Make Ourselves True Inside By Manifesting The Truth As We See It.

Living Is Not Thinking. Thought Is Formed And Guided By Objective Reality Outside Us. Living Is The Constant Adjustment Of Thought To Life And Life To Thought In Such A Way That We Are Always Growing, Always Experiencing New Things In The Old And Old Things In The New. Thus Life Is Always New.

Every Moment And Every Event Of Everyman's Life On Earth Plants Something In His Soul. For Just As The Wind Carries Thousands Of Winged Seeds, So Each Moment Brings With It Germs Of Spiritual Vitality That Come To Rest Imperceptibly In The Minds And Wills Of Men.

Our Idea Of God Tells Us More About Ourselves Than About Him.

Perhaps I Am Stronger Than I Think.

It Is Easy Enough To Tell The Poor To Accept Their Poverty As Gods Will When You Yourself Have Warm Clothes And Plenty Of Food And Medical Care And A Roof Over Your Head And No Worry About The Rent. But If You Want Them To Believe Youtry To Share Some Of Their Poverty And See If You Can Accept It As Gods Will Yourself!

Roof Over Your Head

When Ambition Ends, Happiness Begins.

Happiness That Is Sought For Ourselves Alone Can Never Be Found.

Violence Is Essentially Wordless. And It Can Begin Only Where Thought And Rational Communication Have Broken Down.

Souls Are Like Athletes, That Need Opponents Worthy Of Them, If They Are To Be Tried And Extended And Pushed To The Full Use Of Their Powers, And Rewarded According To Their Capacity.

I Believe We Are Going To Have To Prepare Ourselves For The Difficult And Patient Task Of Outgrowing Rigid And Intransigent Nationalism, And Work Slowly Towards A World Federation Of Peaceful Nations. How Will This Be Possible? Don't Ask Me. I Don't Know. But Unless We Develop A Moral, Spiritual, And Political Wisdom That Is Proportionate To Our Technological Skill, Our Skill May End Us.

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.

The Simplicity That All This Presupposes Is Not Easy To Attain. I Find That My Life Constantly Threatens To Become Complex And Divisive. A Life Of Prayer Is Basically A Very Simple Life. This Simplicity, However, Is The Result Of Asceticism And Effort: It Is Not A Spontaneous Simplicity.

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.

The Sky Is My Prayer, The Birds Are My Prayer, The Wind In The Trees Is My Prayer, For God Is All In All.

Take More Time, Cover Less Ground.

I Can Depend Less And Less On My Own Power And Sense Of Direction...it Is So Strange To Advance Backwards And Get Where You Are Going In A Totally Unexpected Way

His Justice Is The Love That Gives To Each One Of His Creatures The Gifts That His Mercy Has Previously Decreed. And His Mercy Is His Love, Doing Justice To Its Own Exigencies, And Renewing The Gift Which We Had Failed To Accept.

Love Winter When The Plant Says Nothing.

If We Are To Love Sincerely, And With Simplicity, We Must First Of All Overcome The Fear Of Not Being Loved.

I Will Not Fear, For You Are Ever With Me And You Will Never Leave Me To Face My Perils Alone.

Therefore, Doing The Stations Of The Cross Was Still More Laborious Than Consoling, And Required A Sacrifice. It Was Much The Same With All My Devotions. They Did Not Come Easily Or Spontaneously, And They Very Seldom Brought With Them Any Strong Sensible Satisfaction. Nevertheless The Work Of Performing Them Ended In A Profound And Fortifying Peace: A Peace That Was Scarcely Perceptible, But Which Deepened And Which, As My Passions Subsided, Became More And More Real, More And More Sure, And Finally Stayed With Me Permanently.

You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Spiritual Awakening

Faith Is A Light Of Such Supreme Brilliance That It Dazzles The Mind And Darkens All Its Visions Of Other Realities, But In The End When We Become Used To The New Light, We Gain A New View Of All Reality Transfigured And Elevated In The Light Itself.

The Great Thing, And The Only Thing, Is To Adore And Praise God.

For Me To Be A Saint Means To Be Myself. Therefore The Problem Of Sanctity And Salvation Is In Fact The Problem Of Finding Out Who I Am And Of Discovering My True Self.

A Life Is Either All Spiritual Or Not Spiritual At All. No Man Can Serve Two Masters. Your Life Is Shaped By The End You Live For. You Are Made In The Image Of What You Desire.

Ultimately Faith Is The Only Key To The Universe. The Final Meaning Of Human Existence, And The Answers To The Questions On Which All Our Happiness Depends Cannot Be Found In Any Other Way.

When We Are Strong, We Are Always Much Greater Than The Things That Happen To Us.

While Some Men See Ordinary Happenings, Others See Divine Light And Guidance.

The Desire To Kill Is Like The Desire To Attack Another With An Ingot Of Red -hot Iron: I Have To Pick Up The Incandescent Metal And Burn My Own Hand While Burning The Other. Hate Itself Is The Seed Of Death In My Own Heart, While It Seeks The Death Of The Other.

Violence Is Not Completely Fatal Until It Ceases To Disturb Us.

You Are Certainly One Of The Joys Of Life For All Who Have Ever Come Within A Mile Of You.

My Own Personal Task Is Not Simply That Of Poet And Writer (still Less Commentator, Pseudo-prophet); It Is Basically To Praise God Out Of An Inner Center Of Silence, Gratitude, And 'awareness.' This Can Be Realized In A Life That Apparently Accomplishes Nothing. Without Centering On Accomplishment Or Nonaccomplishment, My Task Is Simply The Breathing Of This Gratitude From Day To Day, In Simplicity, And For The Rest Turning My Hand To Whatever Comes, Work Being Part Of Praise, Whether Splitting Logs Or Writing Poems, Or Best Of All Simple Notes.

For Language To Have Meaning, There Must Be Intervals Of Silence Somewhere, To Divide Word From Word And Utterance From Utterance. He Who Retires Into Silence Does Not Necessarily Hate Language. Perhaps It Is Love And Respect For Language Which Imposes Silence Upon Him. For The Mercy Of God Is Not Heard In Words Unless It Is Heard, Both Before And After The Words Are Spoken, In Silence.

October Is A Fine And Dangerous Season In America. It Is Dry And Cool And The Land Is Wild With Red And Gold And Crimson, And All The Lassitudes Of August Have Seeped Out Of Your Blood, And You Are Full Of Ambition. It Is A Wonderful Time To Begin Anything At All.

Do Not Be One Of Those Who, Rather Than Risk Failure, Never Attempts Anything.

Very Well, Then: Why Are You Attached To Any One Book, Or To The Words And Ways Of One Saint When He Himself Tells You To Let Them Go And Walk In Simplicity? To Hang On To Him As If To Make A Method Of Him Is To Contradict Him And To Go In The Opposite Direction To The One In Which He Would Have You Travel.

The Cause Of Liberty Becomes A Mockery If The Price To Be Paid Is The Wholesale Destruction Of Those Who Are To Enjoy Liberty. Ghandi, Quoted In Merton, P. 68

The Art Of Our Time, Sacred Art Included, Will Necessarily Be Characterized By A Certain Poverty, Grimness And Roughness Which Correspond To The Violent Realities Of A Cruel Age.

If Zen Has Any Preference It Is For Glass That Is Plain, Has No Color, And Is "just Glass."

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