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We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also lo...more

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We are what we love. If we love God, in whose image we were created, we discover ourselves in him and we cannot help being happy: we have already achi...more

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Prayer does not blind us to the world, but it transforms our vision of the world, and makes us see it, all men, and all the history of mankind, in the...more

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Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

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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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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving th...more

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The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.

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It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more pe...more

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Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fr...more

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It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts ...more

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We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. But it is necessary that we face ...more

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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 ...more

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Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or wha...more