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The beginning of this love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Can this be Charity?
-- Thomas Merton, Trappist monk and one of the most influential Catholic authors of the 20th century; No Man Is An Island, Chapter 9, "The Measure of Charity".
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