“One might compare the journey of the soul to mystical union, by way of pure faith, to the journey of a car on a dark highway. The only way the driver can keep to the road is by using his headlights. So in the mystical life, reason has its function. The way of faith is necessarily obscure. We drive by night. Nevertheless our reason penetrates the darkness enough to show us a little of the road ahead. It is by the light of reason that we interpret the signposts and make out the landmarks along our way.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Traveling
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“Lanza del Vasto noted a deep connection between play and war, even before the games theory and nuclear war strategy became practically identified. In our society, everything, in fact, is a game. But if everything is a game, then everything leads to war. Play is aimless and yet multiplies obstacles so that the “aim,” which in fact does not exist, cannot be attained by the opponent. For instance, getting a ball in a hole. War is caused by similar aimless aims. Not by hunger, not by real need. War is a game of the powerful, or of whole collectivities devoted to self-assertion. It is “the great public vice that consists in playing with the lives of men.” War plays with life and death, and does so magnificently. Everybody becomes involved. Everybody has to live or die–so that other side may not get a ball in a hole.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: War
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“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Imagination
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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.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Life
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“Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Inspirational
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“We do not exist for ourselves…”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Cooperation
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“Attachment to spiritual things is.. just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: General
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“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
Thomas Merton
Submitted by Quonation |Category: Art
