| Author Quoted | Rainer Maria Rilke |
| Title Quoted | Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge |
| Date (Year/Month/Day) | 1949/12/20 |
| Imprint | |
| Quotation | Rilke's Notebooks have so much power in them that they make me wonder why no one writes like that in monasteries. Not that there have not been better books written in monasteries, or no books more serene. But monks do not seem to be able to write so well-it is as if our professional spirituality sometimes veiled our contact with the naked realities inside us. It is a common failing of religious to lose themselves in a collective, professional personality to let themselves be cast in a mold. |
| Quotation Source | Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk and Writer. The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 2, 1941-1952.; Edited by Jonathan Montaldo. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1996, p. 380-81 |
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| Notes | |
| Link to Merton's Copy |
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