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"The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little."
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"Often the best way to overcome desire is to satisfy it."

"The word lust can mean "selfish desire". . . .It is wanting something so badly you will do anything to get it. That is one of the tricks of the devil. It is too high a price to pay."

"Fornication is a snare that a person sets for himself."

"One of the main roots of ungodliness is being a lover of pleasure more than a lover of God."

"My mom's coming home soon,' I said. 'We should go to your place.'Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. 'I have rules about who I take there.' I was getting really tired of that answer. 'If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?' I guessed, fighting the urge to feel irritated. 'Once I'm inside, I can never leave?'Patch studied me a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, twisted a key off his key chain, and slipped it into the front pocket of my pajama top. 'Once you've gone inside, you have to keep coming back."

"When you come to God, the devil will remind you about the pleasures of sin."

"Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it."

"Fornication deprives a person of his spiritual covering."

"To use a man for what he is naturally best fitted is to keep him, if one can, from apostasy and dissatisfaction. At the same time, life's temptations come most often from that for which one has the greatest aptitude."
Explore more quotes by Thomas Merton


"The ever-changing reality in the midst of which we live should awaken us to the possibility of an uninterrupted dialogue with God. By this I do not mean continuous "talk, or a frivolously conversational form of affective prayer which is sometimes cultivated in convents, but a dialogue of love and of choice. A dialogue of deep wills."


"Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm."


"Into this world, this demented innin which there is absolutely no room for him at all,Christ comes uninvited."


"Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence of God and learns something of the secret of His perfections less by seeing than by fruitive love."


"When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well."


"The point where you become free not to kill, not to exploit, not to destroy, not to compete, because you are no longer afraid of death or the devil or poverty or failure. If you discover this nakedness, you'd better keep it private. People don't like it."


"One of the effects of original sin is an instinctive prejudice in favour of our own selfish desires. We see things as they are not, because we see them centered on ourselves. Fear, anxiety, greed, ambition and our hopeless need for pleasure all distort the image of reality that is reflected in our minds. Grace does not completely correct this distortion all at once: but it gives us a means of recognizing and allowing for it. And it tells us what we must do to correct it. Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right."


"We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists."
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