Asceticism Quote by Thomas Merton

“The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.” quote by Thomas Merton — Download Open image

“The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.”

Thomas Merton

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Asceticism Complexes Easy Effort Life Prayer Results Simple Simple life Simple living Simplicity Spontaneous

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“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of…

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If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells…

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It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is the beginning of blessedness and the consummation of humility is the perfection of all joy. Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul. It is the only…

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Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in…

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Love winter when the plant says nothing.

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The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of…

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The religion of art, like the religion of politics, was born from the ruins of Christianity. Art inherited from the old religion the power of consecrating things and endowing them with a sort of eternity; museums are our temples, and the objects displayed in them are beyond history. Politics--or more precisely, Revolution--co-opted the other function of religion: changing human beings…

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Fie on the eloquence that leaves us craving itself, not things!

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The beauty of a cuckoo is in its notes, that of a woman in her unalloyed devotion to her husband, that of an ugly…

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“In his treatise on the battles between the gods underlying ancient Dionysian theatre, the young Nietzsche notes: 'Alas! The magic of these struggles is such, that he who sees them must also take part in them.' Similarly, an anthropology of the practising life is infected by its subject. Dealing with practices, asceticisms and exercises, whether or not they are declared…

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Catholicism is not ritualism; it may in the future be fighting some sort of superstitious and idolatrous exaggeration of ritual. Catholicism is not asceticism;…

Gilbert K. Chesterton

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The main motive for nonattachment is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual,…

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Dieting is our last tie with asceticism.

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When you reach your sixties, you have to decide whether you're going to be a sot or an ascetic. In other words if you…

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Everybody who does not live in a prostitute's bed and on a diet of cocaine snow is called an ascetic nowadays.

George Bernard Shaw

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Genuine asceticism for finding one's own soul and for the good of humanity is worthy of reverence.

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Many modern scholars have found the asceticism expressed in Plato unacceptable; it does not sound like the advice of a reasonable man in the…

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The dunyâ distracts and preoccupies the heart and body, but al-zuhd (asceticism, not giving importance to worldly things) gives rest to the heart and…

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Asceticism Quote by Thomas Merton

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