Thomas Merton Quotes About Vision

Quotes about: Vision

• We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God manifests Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events ... The only thing is we don't see it ... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

  Thomas Merton

  People, Shining, Heaven

• The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

  Thomas Merton

  Sweet, Heart, Men

  Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

• 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

• It might be good to open our eyes and see.

  Thomas Merton

  Eye, Vision, Might

  Thomas Merton (2010). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

• Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

  Thomas Merton

  Loneliness, Being Alone, Profound

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

• Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.

  Thomas Merton

  Reality, Light, Views

• 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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