Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 13

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• The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil.

  Thomas Merton

  Jobs, Offering, Suffering

  5 Copy quote

• For me to be a saint means to be myself.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Saint

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Worship, Hell

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.26, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Love Is, Men

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.124, New Directions Publishing

  38 Copy quote

• ....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

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• By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace.

  Thomas Merton

  Political, Trials, Favors

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.134, Sounds True

  19 Copy quote

• Love is an intensification of life.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is

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• Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is, Poverty, Epiphany

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.254, Macmillan

  27 Copy quote

• Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Anxiety, Insecurity

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.13, Shambhala Publications

  12 Copy quote

• The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Contemplative Life, Discovery

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate.

  Thomas Merton

  Pain, Hate, Love Is

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.72, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Dream, Mean

  22 Copy quote

• Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, War, Sacrifice

  Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.35, Macmillan

  23 Copy quote

• Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.

  Thomas Merton

  Keys, Finals, Answers

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.130, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Inspirational, Family

  "No Man is an Island".

  49 Copy quote

• When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Needs, World

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• Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Men

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

  10 Copy quote

• There should be at least a room or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you.

  Thomas Merton

  Rooms, Should, Corners

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

  7 Copy quote

• Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Long, Forever

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.462, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.

  Thomas Merton

  Order, Answers, May

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.119, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

  Thomas Merton

  Simple, Reality, Silence

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• ...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

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• We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

  Thomas Merton

  Meditation

  Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon (2010). “Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation”, p.52, Bloomsbury Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

  Thomas Merton

  Despair, May, Hopeless

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

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