We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to those who love us. But it is necessary that we face this also. The full acceptance of our abjection and uselessness is the virtue that can make us and others rich in the grace of God. It takes heroic charity and humility to let others sustain us when we are absolutely incapable of sustaining ourselves. We cannot suffer well unless we see Christ everywhere, both in suffering and in the charity of those who come to the aid of our affliction. Thomas Merton
Some Similar Quotes
  1. The truth is what you live through while you're looking for the truth. - Marty Rubin
  2. Ye are better than all the ballads That ever were sung or said; For ye are living poems, And all the rest are dead. - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  3. Don't sign your namebetween worlds, surmountthe manifold of meanings, trust the tearstain, learn to live. - Paul Celan
  4. To breathe is to live, but to write unimpeded is to breathe eternal. - M. Clifford
  5. The life of my people is to remember forever; each head granary is full. The life of your people is to forget: your thing granaries ("museums"), and not yourselves, are full. - Alice Walker
More Quotes By Thomas Merton
  1. It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.
  2. This desire to govern a woman -- it lies very deep, and men and women must fight it together.... But I do love you surely in a better way then he does." He thought. "Yes -- really in a better way. I want you to...
  3. We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very...
  4. The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
  5. Life' wrote a friend of mine, 'is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.
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