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Quotes about Relationships

Nu putem fi în relaÈ›ii de pace cu alÃ…£ii pentru c? nu suntem în relaÃ…£ii de pace cu noi înÅŸine, ÅŸi nu putem fi în relaÃ…£ii de pace cu noi înÅŸine pentru c? nu avem pace cu Dumnezeu.
— Thomas Merton
Love, then, must be true to the ones we love and to ourselves, and also to its own laws. I cannot be true to myself if I pretend to have more in common than I actually have with someone whom I may like for a selfish and unworthy reason.
— Thomas Merton
Charity must teach us that friendship is a holy thing, and that it is neither charitable nor holy to base our friendship on falsehood. We can be, in some sense, friends to all men because there is no man on earth with whom we do not have something in common. But it would be false to treat too many men as intimate friends. It is not possible to be intimate with more than very few, because there are only very few in the world with whom we have practically everything in common.
— Thomas Merton
I must become convinced and penetrated by the realization that without my love for them they may perhaps not achieve the things God has willed for them. My
— Thomas Merton
We can be, in some sense, friends to all men because there is no man on earth with whom we do not have something in common. But it would be false to treat too many men as intimate friends. It is not possible to be intimate with more than very few, because there are only very few in the world with whom we have practically everything in common. Love, then, must
— Thomas Merton
The things that we love tell us what we are.
— Thomas Merton
Man is not at peace with his fellow man because he is not at peace with himself. He is not at peace with himself because he is not at peace with God.
— Thomas Merton
We will to separate ourselves from that love. We reject it entirely and absolutely, and will not acknowledge it, simply because it does not please us to be loved.
— Thomas Merton
In the Father the infinite Love of God is always beginning and in the Son it is always full and in the Holy Spirit it is perfect and it is renewed and never ceases to rest in its everlasting source. But if you follow Love forward and backward from Person to Person, you can never track it to a stop, you can never corner it and hold it down and fix it to one of the Persons as if He could appropriate to Himself the fruit of the love of the others.
— Thomas Merton
being loved disinterestedly reminds us that we all need love from others, and depend upon the charity of others to carry on our own lives. And we refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation.
— Thomas Merton
Because God's love is in me, it can come to you from a different and special direction that would be closed if He did not live in me, and because His love is in you, it can come to me from a quarter from which it would not otherwise come. And because it is in both of us, God has greater glory.
— Thomas Merton
All these three answers are insufficient. The third says we must love only ourselves. The second says we must love only another. The first says that in loving another we simply seek the most effective way to love ourselves. The true answer, which is supernatural, tells us that we must love ourselves in order to be able to love others, that we must find ourselves by giving ourselves to them. The words of Christ are clear: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
— Thomas Merton