A Quote by Thomas Merton

Living is not thinking. Thought is formed and guided by objective reality outside us. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.
She had always thought applying to college would be exciting. Living away from home, meeting so many new people, Learning new things, making a few poor life desicisons.
Sampling is a new way of doing something that’s been with us for a long time […] The mix breaks free from the old associations. New contexts form from old. The script gets flipped. The languages evolve and learn to speak in new forms, new thoughts. The sound of thought becomes legible again at the edge of the new meanings.
We are continuously living a new life, and when the old and the new do not fit nicely together, the old - no longer able to contain the new - should be discarded.
The tragedy is that many of us are living desperate Christian life. Sunday comes and we get some strength, and then we lose some on Monday; a good deal is gone by Tuesday and we wonder whether we have anything left. On Wednesday it has all gone and then we exist. Or perhaps refreshment comes in some other way, some meeting we attend, some friends we meet. Now that is the old order of things, that is not the new. He puts a well within us. We are not always drawing from somewhere outside. The well, the spring, goes on springing up from within into everlasting life.
To be born again is, as it were, to enter upon a new existence, to have a new mind, a new heart, new views, new principles, new tastes, new affections, new likings, new dislikings, new fears, new joys, new sorrows, new love to things once hated, new hatred to things once loved, new thoughts of God, and ourselves, and the world, and the life to come, and salvation.
I do believe that the outward and the inward life correspond; that if any should succeed to live a higher life, others would not know of it; that difference and distance are one. To set about living a true life is to go on a journey to a distant country, gradually to find ourselves surrounded by new scenes and men; and as long as the old are around me, I know that I am not in any true sense living a new or a better life.
The thing about new things is you feel new when you buy them, you feel as though you are somebody different because you own something different. We are our possessions, you know. There are people who get addicted to buying new stuff. Things. Piles and piles of things. But the new things become old things so quickly. We need new things to replace the old things.
Another thing about creation is that every day it is like it gave birth, and it's always kind of an innocent and refreshing. So it's always virginal to me, and it's always a surprise. ... Each piece seems to have a life of its own. Every little piece or every big piece that I make becomes a very living thing to me, very living. I could make a million pieces; the next piece gives me a whole new thing. It is a new center. Life is total at that particular time. And that's why it's right. That reaffirms my life.
I thought I was an old soul, and that I knew life, but then starting the real life, I figured I am completely new.
We can speak of politics, ethics, and in this way, speak about the world. But at the same time, it's always in a way that is totally nebulous and abstracted, this way of thinking about reality. And that's why I write the way I do - it's an almost immortal way to show dependence on the biological, the political, the moral parts of us. I say immortal because we now have to find new formats, new eloquences, and resolve within ourselves this "constructed" life, a life that is incomplete, imperfect.
The great thing about living in New York is the constant change of things. It inspires me to keep moving, push forward, question ideas. I have a heavy travel schedule so being in a new environment always gives me another perspective to see things from.
The most rapid way to change a root thought, or sponsoring idea, is to reverse the thought-word-deed process. Do the deed that you want to have the new thought about. Then say the words that you want to have your new thought about. Do this often enough and you'll train the mind to think a new way.
I'm living the exact life I planned on living when I was five. My life has taken some turns and changes that I didn't anticipate, and it has brought me different things. I thought material things would bring me happiness, which they didn't. But through this, I have learned what things are important and what aren't.
It is evident that the Church is always abandoning more the old traditional structures of European life and, therefore, is changing its appearance and living new forms in itself. It's clear most of all that the de-Christianization of Europe is progressing, that the Christian element is always vanishing more from the fabric of society.
I spent a whole year in New York without going back to France. And I always came back because my mother was living in New York since I was 13. So I went to summer camps, hang out at the Roxy, go to class for ballet, so I always had part of my life in New York.
When I was a little kid, all I wanted to do was to escape what I thought was the country and get to a city. Probably film and television had influenced me so much, I really thought the key to happiness was living a very artificial life in a penthouse in New York with martini glasses.
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