The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves Thomas Merton quotes

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves

Thomas Merton quotes

www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/1711.Thomas_Merton

Art enables us to find ourselves 

and lose ourselves at the same time.”

I trust you, 

God, 

always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. 

I will not fear, 

for you are ever with me, 

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone

Love is our true destiny

recognize 

the possibilities and challenges 

offered by the present moment, 

and to embrace them with courage, 

faith and hope.” 

ask me what I think 

is keeping me from living 

fully for the thing 

I want to live for.

Every breath we draw is a gift of His love,

every moment of existence is a grace, 

for it brings with it immense graces from Him. 

Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, 

is never unresponsive, 

is constantly awakening to new wonder and 

to praise of the goodness of God. 

....the grateful person knows that God is good, 

not by hearsay but by experience. 

What we are asked to do is to love, 

...this love itself will render both ourselves and 

our neighbors worthy.” 

The one who does most to avoid suffering is, 

in the end, the one who suffers most

If you love peace, 

then hate injustice,

hate tyranny, 

hate greed 

 but hate these things in yourself,

 not in another.”

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. 

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 idea of God tells 

us more about ourselves 

than about Him.”

there is greater comfort 

in the substance of silence

 than in the answer to a question.” 

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved.

It is better to find God on the threshold of despair 

than to risk our lives in a complacency 

that has never felt the need of forgiveness

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.” 

Solitude 

is a way to defend the spirit 

against the murderous din

 of our materialism.”

we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true. ” 

― Thomas Merton

To allow oneself to be carried away 

by a multitude of conflicting concerns, 

to surrender to too many demands, 

to commit oneself 

to too many projects,

to want to help everyone

in everything,

is to succumb to 

the violence of our times

The man who fears to be alone

 will never be anything but lonely...

...the man who learns, 

in solitude and recollection, 

to be at peace with his own loneliness, 

and to prefer its reality to the illusion of 

merely natural companionship, 

comes to know the invisible companionship of God.

...one is alone with God in all places,

 and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, 

because he loves them in God...

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. 

When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. 

...it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.” 

― Thomas Merton, 

 

Peace...demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience

Souls are like athletes that need opponentsworthy 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