Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 18

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The least of the work of learning is done in classrooms.

Thomas Merton

Learning, Done, Classroom

"Love and Living".

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How far have I to go to find you in whom I have already arrived.

Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Journey, Acting

Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.92, Macmillan

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We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the thing necessary for us-whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need

Thomas Merton

Missing, Needs, May

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.137, Shambhala Publications

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To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Acknowledge Him, Evil

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Prayer, Reality

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.42, Shambhala Publications

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Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. "I am gift." All that I am is something that's given, and given freely. Being doesn't cost anything. There's no price tag, no strings attached.

Thomas Merton

Love, Spring, Price Tag

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What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying “I am nothing” I mean in effect “I wish I were not what I am.

Thomas Merton

Mistake, Mean, Humility

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.49, Macmillan

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If we have not silence, God is not heard in our music. If we have no rest God, does not bless our work.

Thomas Merton

Silence, Doe, Bless

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.134, Shambhala Publications

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The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Who I Am, Secret

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

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Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity, and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between these two.

Thomas Merton

Distance, Loss, Discovery

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.45, Macmillan

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I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul.

Thomas Merton

Loneliness, Soul, Solitude

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... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the limitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject; and that is something else again.

Thomas Merton

Reality, Mind, Shadow

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Love is not a mere emotion or sentiment. It is the lucid and ardent responses of the whole person to a value that is revealed to him as perfect.

Thomas Merton

Love, Perfect, Emotion

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.26, University of Notre Dame Pess

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We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' is a matter of sense and sensibility. Nevertheless, if we really love others it will not be too hard to like them also.

Thomas Merton

Matter, Love One Another, Nevertheless

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being... All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God.

Thomas Merton

Prayer, Thinking, Self

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Life reveals itself to us only in so far as well live it.

Thomas Merton

Wells

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In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Order, Evil

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.55, Shambhala Publications

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If there was no other proof of the infinite patience of God, a very good one could be found in His toleration of the pictures that are painted of Him.

Thomas Merton

Infinite, Proof, Found

Thomas Merton (1948). “Figures for an apocalypse”

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To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.

Thomas Merton

Prayer, Silence, Unity

Thomas Merton (2009). “A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960”, p.47, Harper Collins

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Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

Thomas Merton

Death, Wisdom, Heart

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Order, Personality

Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

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Since no man ever can, or could, live by himself and for himself alone, the destinies of thousands of other people were bound to be affected, some remotely, but some very directly and near-at-hand, by my own choices and decisions and desires, as my own life would also be formed and modified according to theirs.

Thomas Merton

Destiny, Men, Hands

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The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Analysis, Firsts

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.8, Sounds True

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Duty does not have to be dull. Love can make it beautiful and fill it with life.

Thomas Merton

Beautiful, Doe, Dull

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.298, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

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