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There's something magical about film, it's the ultimate for me, because it's kind of permanent - inasmuch as anything is. When I went to see Buster Keaton when I was about 14 and I came out of the cinema having really laughed at this film which had been made 50 years before, I thought: That's immortality. It's fantastic.


Paul Merton

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THOMAS MERTON Think of it, all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody…What a thing it is to s...
THOMAS MERTON Life is this simple: We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining thro...
THOMAS MERTON Men in bowlers and dark suits with their rolled-up umbrellas. Men full of propriety, calm and proud,...
THOMAS MERTON Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptat...
THOMAS MERTON The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
THOMAS MERTON In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for ''finding...
THOMAS MERTON In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was sud...
THOMAS MERTON Perhaps I am stronger than I think
THOMAS MERTON The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay...
THOMAS MERTON Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real
THOMAS MERTON Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments.
THOMAS MERTON To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who ha...
THOMAS MERTON To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to li...
THOMAS MERTON We thought it would have significance for practice but nothing of the magnitude that's occurred over...
ROBERT MERTON In effect, the same kind of methodology or technology that was developed about 25 years ago is being...
ROBERT MERTON The moral mandate to achieve success exerts pressure to succeed by fair means, if possible, and by f...
ROBERT MERTON It is a good idea to be ambitious, to have goals, to want to be good at what you do, but it is a ter...
ROBERT MERTON The point is not that they will then be nice to you. It is that you will feel better about yourself.
ROBERT MERTON We must be willing to accept the bitter truth that, in the end, we may have to become a burden to th...
THOMAS MERTON If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.
THOMAS MERTON Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
THOMAS MERTON To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many...
THOMAS MERTON Be still:
There is no longer any need of comment.
It was a lucky wind
That blew away ...
THOMAS MERTON For Abelard, the death of Christ on the Cross did not, strictly speaking, redeem man: it only offere...
THOMAS MERTON And yet with every wound You robbed me of a crime,
And as each blow was paid with Blood,
Y...
THOMAS MERTON Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it o...
THOMAS MERTON I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.
THOMAS MERTON All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of t...
THOMAS MERTON Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to t...
THOMAS MERTON Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all others.
THOMAS MERTON I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of ...
THOMAS MERTON What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from...
THOMAS MERTON We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at th...
THOMAS MERTON We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace ...
THOMAS MERTON The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's st...
THOMAS MERTON