Thomas Merton Quotes About Life

Quotes about: Life

• A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, God, Spiritual

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

• To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Life, Wisdom

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

• A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Wisdom, Men

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.99, Macmillan

• The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Wisdom, Real

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.387, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Thinking, Political

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

• The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis, but first of all by living. For until we have begun to live our prudence has no material to work on. And until we have begun to fail we have no way of working out our success.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Work Out, Analysis

• 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

• We do not exist for ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Happiness, Success

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

• Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Country, Art

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

• Today will never come again.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Today

• Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Real, Keys

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.216, Macmillan

• ... but any fool knows that you don't need money to get enjoyment out of life.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Needs, Fool

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.29, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Awareness, Found

  Thomas Merton (2010). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

• No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Men, Long

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.11, Shambhala Publications

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