It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.
Interpretation
Solitude and silence help cultivate true love for others.
In the quote, Thomas Merton emphasizes that finding peace through solitude and silence allows one to develop genuine feelings of love and compassion for others. This suggests that introspection and self-awareness are essential to fostering meaningful relationships with those we care about.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of community, one might say, 'As Thomas Merton reminds us, it is in deep solitude and silence that we can foster real love for our friends and family.'
The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
You are made in the image of what you desire.
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
The deep joy we take in the company of people with whom we have just recently fallen in love is undisguisable.
Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)
I'm so proud the fans still sing my name, but I fear tomorrow they will stop. I fear it because I love it. And everything you love, you fear you will lose.
People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening, because they're not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet.
Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.
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