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Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings

This book compiles a selection of spiritual essays and reflections by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and prominent writer. The writings delve into the depths of religious contemplation, offering insights into Merton's personal spiritual journey and his exploration of Christian mysticism. more

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Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 - December 10, 1968) was an American writer, poet, social critic, and mystic. His works covered a wide range of topics including philosophy, religion, and social justice, and were highly appreciated by readers. more

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“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.”

ThinkingWayRealRememberFormCommonKindnessGraceSkillsGoodnessOrdinaryTasksInspiredSimplicitySaintRoutineUsualReverenceObscurityOrdinary LifePeacefulness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“The reason this system can’t be overthrown in this country,” Walter said, “is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they’re not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this country isn’t rational. It’s taking place on the level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it.”

SaidCountryReasonGrowthLevelsEmotionLibertyClassRightsConversationEuropeRatePopulationIncomeSocialismRationalDespiteResentmentHungFree MarketPopulation GrowthPersonal Liberty
Author:Jonathan Franzen
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“Day after day I read Freud, thinking myself to be very enlightened and scientific when, as a matter of fact, I was about as scientific as an old woman secretly poring over books about occultism, trying to tell her own fortune, and learning how to dope out the future form the lines in the palm of her hand. I don't know if I ever got very close to needing a padded cell: but if I ever had gone crazy, I think psychoanalysis would have been the one thing chiefly responsible for it.”

IfsThinkingKnowsTryingHas BeensBookMatterFactsWisdomHandsFormLinesGoneOne ThingCrazyResponsibleFortuneCellsEnlightenedPalmsPsychoanalysisMatter Of FactDopeOld WomanGone Crazy
Author:Thomas Merton
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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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“The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.”

MenSoulWisdomLightSeemsLeftLosesNaturalPerfectLevelsDarknessHigherShiningTransformedCrystalsSplendor
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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