Thomas Merton Quotes

Quotes about:

• You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

  Thomas Merton

  Moving On, Faith, Courage

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.206, Image

  263 Copy quote

• In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.

  Thomas Merton

  Discipline, Confusion, Silence

  167 Copy quote
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  The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Emotional, Mind

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.72, Image

  182 Copy quote

• The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

  Thomas Merton

  Relationship, Spiritual, Inspirational Love

  316 Copy quote

• Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Spiritual, Wisdom

  Thomas Merton (1976). “The Power and Meaning of Love”

  240 Copy quote

• My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Believe, Inspiration

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings”, p.8, Harper Collins

  346 Copy quote

• To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Gratitude, Grateful

  181 Copy quote

• Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

  Thomas Merton

  Wind, Tree, Forests

  107 Copy quote

• The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activity neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

  Thomas Merton

  Roots, Demand, Want

  92 Copy quote

• In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

  Thomas Merton

  Silence, Objects, Cease

  104 Copy quote

• People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

  Thomas Merton

  Wall, Climbing, People

  151 Copy quote

• When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

  Thomas Merton

  Grace

  51 Copy quote

• No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Answers, He Man

  Thomas Merton (2012). “On Eastern Meditation”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• Today will never come again.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Today

  6 Copy quote

• You are made in the image of what you desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Desire, Spiritual Awakening, Made

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.64, Macmillan

  73 Copy quote

• I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Catholic, Gods Will, I Can

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

  8 Copy quote

• We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.

  Thomas Merton

  Revolution, Transformation, Endless

  40 Copy quote

• Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him...who loves us, who is near to us.

  Thomas Merton

  Prayer, Way

  29 Copy quote

• How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

  Thomas Merton

  Journey, Men, Cities

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Giving, Firsts

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

  59 Copy quote

• Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.

  Thomas Merton

  Thank You, Gratitude, Awakening

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.48, Macmillan

  55 Copy quote

• Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Valentines Day, Fate

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.32, Macmillan

  191 Copy quote

• When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Children, Heart

  42 Copy quote

• ‎"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.

  Thomas Merton

  Jobs, Stopping, Worthy

  Thomas Merton (1976). “Disputed Questions”, p.143, Macmillan

  177 Copy quote

• Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Thinking

  30 Copy quote

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