“We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)”

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton - “We have the choice of two identities...” 1

Similar quotes

“A mask has but one expression, frozen and eternal, yet it is always and ever the essential expression, and to hide one’s telltale flesh behind the external skeleton of the mask is to display the universal identity of the inner being in place of the outer identity that is transitory and corrupt. The freedom of the masked is not the vulgar political freedom of the successful revolutionary, but the magical freedom of the Divine, beyond politics and beyond success. A mask, any mask, whether horned like a beast or feathered like an angel, is the face of immortality. Meet me in Cognito, baby. In Cognito, we’ll have nothing to hide.”

Tom Robbins
Read more

“What we cannot admit in ourselves we often find in others. If a person--who speaks of another person whom he hates with a vengeance that seems nearly irrational--can be brought to describe the characteristics which he most dislikes, you will frequently have a picture of his own repressed aspects which are unrecognized to him though obvious to others. -June Singer”

Elizabeth Wagele
Read more

“Everything that seemingly happens externally is occurring in order to trigger something within us, to expand us and take us back to who we truly are.”

Anita Moorjani
Read more

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Oscar Wilde
Read more

“Nothing is more real than the masks we make to show each other who we are.”

Christopher Barzak
Read more