"What is the relation of [contemplation] to action?
"Simply this. He who attempts to act
and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own
self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have
anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the
contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered
ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas." —Thomas Merton1
1Thomas Merton, Contemplation in a World of
Action, 2nd ed. (University of Notre Dame Press: 1998),
160-161.
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