The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves,…

Thomas Merton
439 citations
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Love Reflection
14

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We do not exist for ourselves. ✨ Thomas Merton (2005). No Man is an Island, p.21, Shambhala Publications
In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the … ▶
To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live ex … ▶
The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. ✨ Thomas Merton (2005). No Man is an Island, p.213, Shambhala Publications
We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen. ✨ Thomas Merton (2002). Seeds

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

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