Thomas Merton Quotes About Choices

Quotes about: Choices

• We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Decisions You Make, Self

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.25, Shambhala Publications

• To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Religious, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1975). “He is risen”, Tabor Pub

• Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Love Is, Men

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.124, New Directions Publishing

• We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Real, Two

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

• Since no man ever can, or could, live by himself and for himself alone, the destinies of thousands of other people were bound to be affected, some remotely, but some very directly and near-at-hand, by my own choices and decisions and desires, as my own life would also be formed and modified according to theirs.

  Thomas Merton

  Destiny, Men, Hands

• A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions, is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of "choice" when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.

  Thomas Merton

  Freedom, Choices, Tasks

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.6, Macmillan

• To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Choices, Vision

  Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.280, New Directions Publishing

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