Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 12

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Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.

Thomas Merton

Art, Giving, Individuality

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.30, New Directions Publishing

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The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Thomas Merton

Liberty, Causes, Destruction

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Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

Thomas Merton

True Relationship, Illusion, Contemplative

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The only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to all his illusions about the world.

Thomas Merton

Men, World, Way

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It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Men, Order

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There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.

Thomas Merton

Inspirational, Visible, Wholeness

"In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton".

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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

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Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.

Thomas Merton

Technology, Temptation, Spirituality

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.18, Image

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We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Failure, Fall

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.53, Macmillan

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The goal of fasting is inner unity.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Goal, Unity

Thomas Merton (2004). “The Way of Chuang Tzu”, p.54, Shambhala Publications

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On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Humble, Humility

Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

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This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Powerful, Block

Thomas Merton (1968). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.109, New Directions Publishing

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I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.

Thomas Merton

Kindness, Real, Thinking

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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

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Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or 'fight for.' It is indeed 'fighting for peace' that starts all the wars. What, after all, are the pretexts of all these Cold War crises, but 'fighting for peace?' Peace is something you have or do not have. If you are yourself at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Then share your peace with everyone, and everyone will be at peace.

Thomas Merton

War, Fighting, World

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Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.

Thomas Merton

Humility, Errors, Sincerity

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

Thomas Merton

Light, Events, Hell

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

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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

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Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

Thomas Merton

Two, Doe, Compare

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.2, Shambhala Publications

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Imagination has the creative task of making symbols, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.

Thomas Merton

Art, Light, Imagination

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.178, University of Notre Dame Pess

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The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Self, Jewels

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

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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".

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God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Heart, Expression

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.220, Shambhala Publications

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The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.176, Shambhala Publications

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The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.

Thomas Merton

Praise, Praise God, Adore

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

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Born: January 31, 1915
Died: December 10, 1968
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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