Thomas Merton Quotes About Wisdom

Quotes about: Wisdom

• For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Destiny, Want

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.138, Shambhala Publications

• 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

• 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”

• Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Fake People

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.119, Shambhala Publications

• If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Money, Writing

  Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.198, Shambhala Publications

• Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Book, Love You

• The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Truth, Errors

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.246, Shambhala Publications

• 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

• But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Thinking, Hair

  "My Argument with the Gestapo: Autobiographical novel".

• 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

• Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Wisdom, Jesus

• The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Father, Men

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.189, Shambhala Publications

• Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Solitude, Way

• The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Temptation, Simple Life

  Forbes, August 4, 1980.

• If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Decision, Useless

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.105, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

• The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Hurt, Insignificant Things

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Ideas

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.15, New Directions Publishing

• Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Ambition, Way

  Thomas Merton, Lawrence Cunningham (1996). “A search for solitude: pursuing the monk's true life”, Harper San Francisco

• ....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Jesus, Essence

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.82, Shambhala Publications

• Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Wisdom, Prayer

  "New Seeds of Contemplation".

• Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Artist, Saint

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.98, New Directions Publishing

• We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, True Life, Life Is

  Thomas Merton (2008). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.35, Sounds True

• Living is not thinking. Thought is formed and guided by objective reality outside us. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Reality, Thinking

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.32, Macmillan

• A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Succeed

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.133, Shambhala Publications

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