The Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University

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Author QuotedAurelius Augustinus
Title QuotedConfessions
Date (Year/Month/Day)1939/09/13
Imprint 
QuotationBecause ambitious men are absurd, the same suspiciousness towards ambition literature has fallen upon confession literature. (By ambition literature - not Horatio Alger: Stendal.) That is upon all confession literature indiscriminately. Rousseau as well as Saint Augustine. The Confessions of Rousseau belong with ambition literature: these of Saint Augustine do not. The difference is that Saint Augustine confesses God. Rousseau proclaims himself.
Quotation SourceRun to the mountain: The Story of a Vocation. The journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 1, 1939-1941.; Edited by Patrick Hart, O.C.S.O. / San Francisco : Harper Collins. 1995, p. 21
Letter to 
Notes 
Link to Merton's Copy  

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