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The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
-Thomas Merton
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The Pleasure Of A Good Act Is

Thomas Merton
The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
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Order Complacency Vices

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Many great persons have been of opinion that love is no other thing than complacency itself, in which they have had much appearance of reason. for not only does the movement of love take its origin from the complacency which the heart feels at the first approach of good, and find its end in a second complacency which returns to the heart by union with the thing beloved--but further, it depends for its preservation on this complacency, and can only subsist through it as through its mother and nurse; so that as soon as the complacency ceases, love ceases.
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It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that i drink another whiskey and soda. i, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.
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I think uncertainty is good for things. certainty breeds complacency and complacency means that you just sit somewhere in your nice little comfortable suburban house in michigan, looking at cnn and saying, "oh, those poor immigrant children that are all coming across the border. but we really can't have them here - that isn't what god wants. let's send them all back to the drug cartels." there's a complacency to it.
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Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. no virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.
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Let others mock at you, oppose you, when you are under the influence of any passion; do not be in the least offended with those who mock at or oppose you, for they do you good; crucify your self-love and acknowledge the wrong, the error of your heart. but have the deepest pity for those who mock at words and works of faith and piety, of righteousness; for those who oppose the good which you are doing... god preserve you - getting exasperated at them.
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Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. no virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our own standpoint. therefore we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
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