Thomas Merton Quotes About Evil

Quotes about: Evil

• Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Wisdom, Hate

• To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Acknowledge Him, Evil

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done 'for the common good.'...one might point to the way in which racial hatreds and even persecution are admitted by people who consider themselves, and perhaps in some sense are, kind, tolerant, civilized and even humane.

  Thomas Merton

  Names, People, Evil

• The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Evil, Guilt

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

• ...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every day.

  Thomas Merton

  Evil, Overcoming, Triumph

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

• The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Evil, Temptation

• In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Order, Evil

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.55, Shambhala Publications

• A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Book, Evil

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Everybody has an instinctive desire to do good things and avoid evil. But that desire is sterile as long as we have no experience of what it means to be good.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Long, Evil

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.34, Macmillan

• It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Powerful, Evil, Hatred

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.112, New Directions Publishing

• The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive, and suicidal neglect of our own being.

  Thomas Merton

  Suicidal, Evil, World

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.222, Image

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