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. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.
Interpretation
Journaling reveals that life’s lessons often repeat over time, but our understanding deepens with reflection.
This quote by Thomas Merton emphasizes the value of journaling as a tool for self-reflection and understanding. As we document our thoughts and experiences, we may find that many of our insights are not entirely new, but rather echoes of past realizations. However, with time and repeated contemplation, we can develop a deeper comprehension of these ideas and experiences, showcasing the journey of personal growth and reflection.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal development, you might say, 'As Thomas Merton once stated, keeping a journal reminds us that our life's lessons often repeat, but each time we learn more.'
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.
To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil inclinations.
Experience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.
What we have learned to look for in a situation determines mostly what we see.
Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings and strictly honest, who complained of hard luck. A good character, good habits and iron industry are impregnable to the assaults of all ill-luck that fools ever dreamed.
A different language is a different vision of life.
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