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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.”

MindMeanDoeEndsReasonWholeLightOrderFoundProcessDifferencesAttentionReaderExerciseLaborEmbraceIntuitionFulfillmentComplexityReasoningFacultyMeans To An EndArgumentation
Book:The Ascent to Truth
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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.”

IdeasWholeGodSpiritualityCompassionKindnessAwarenessInvolvedCompassionateBrotherhoodInterdependenceUnity In DiversityCommon GroundKindness And CompassionSpiritual AwarenessKindness To OthersCompassion For OthersCompassion And EmpathyPeace With OthersAwareness Of Others
Book:Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation
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“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”

HumansWholeWisdomBodyDesireOrderPassionPolicyProductsLimitsHighestPressesStudiosTensionNervesFactoriesArtificialStrainHuman BodyPrintingPrinting PressSynthetic
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.”

WholeBodySpiritChristChurchDoorsTeachingUniqueAccessInner LifePersonal ExperiencesBody Of Christ
Book:The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty
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“Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.”

ThinkingMenWholeLightSpiritualLife IsSpiritCitiesMeditationAirModernOfficeMachinesConstantIntentionNoiseFlightAdvertisingPropagandaShopsWildernessMechanismExhaustedSuggestionsEnteringEverlastingModern LifeNeurosisCity Life
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

KnowsWholeWisdomRealityLawPrayerPerfectMoralWrittenDivineConscienceFunctionUnionsPerceiveConcreteEnlighteningDivine Law
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“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.”

WholeSeemsPoliticalEconomicFairsDestructionMurderInjusticeFavorsTrialsTyrannySpiteConcentrationCampsVowSaying NoJudicialConcentration CampMonastic Life
Book:Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation
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“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.”

WorldHeartWholeDarkSecretSilenceHeardSweetLoversBedRootsWhole WorldForestsWarmthBrides
Book:Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage
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“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.”

IfsGivingDoeWholeHelpingTogetherEnergyChanceExistenceSilencePerspectiveDrawsRelationBalancedLives Of OthersFragmentedGive Us A Chance
Book:Love and Living
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“When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.”

WorldI CanWholeFormPrayerSilenceInvolvedWhole LifeDistractionSilence IsMeasurementLiberated
Book:Thoughts In Solitude
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“The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.”

MenWorldSoulWholeSpiritualPurposeChristBehindsAttitudeSurfaceGesturesConventionalPenetrateSpiritual DirectionBeneath The SurfaceSpiritual Freedom
Book:Spiritual Direction and Meditation
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“The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter.”

PeopleImportantMatterWholeMightSpiritualityPovertyTroubleImportanceSupposed To BeDetachmentCrux
Book:Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters
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“You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work out speedily and efficiently as we would like them to. The reason for this is not only the loving wisdom of God, but also the fact that our acts have to fit into a great complex pattern that we cannot possibly understand. I have learned over the years that Providence is always a whole lot wiser than any of us, and that there are always not only good reasons, but the very best reasons for the delays and blocks that often seem to us so frustrating and absurd.”

WayYearsIdeasReasonWholeFactsSeemsRealizingFitOrdinaryComplexesPatternsWork OutAbsurdBlockProvidenceI Have LearnedWiserDelayFrustratingDealings
Book:The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters
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