Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 21

Quotes about:

• To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.

  Thomas Merton

  Joy, Intuition, Levels

  "Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation".

  8 Copy quote

• The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Doubt, He Man

  Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.306, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• One opens the inner doors of one's heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit, out of whose abysses love wells up without fail and gives itself to all.

  Thomas Merton

  Heart, Doors, Giving

  7 Copy quote

• What do you want to want to be, anyway?" "I don't know; I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic." "What you should say"--he told me--"what you should say is that you want to be a saint.

  Thomas Merton

  Catholic, Saint, Want

  7 Copy quote

• We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Needs, Firsts

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.248, Shambhala Publications

  9 Copy quote

• For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Light, Bird

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Jesus, Able

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

  4 Copy quote

• Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.

  Thomas Merton

  Reality, Men, Silence

  5 Copy quote

• That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.

  Thomas Merton

  People, Kind, Felt

  Thomas Merton (1989). “Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters”, p.73, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further responsibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God.

  Thomas Merton

  Looks, Study, Infinite

  "Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation".

  5 Copy quote

• The man who lives in division is living in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he has ceased to be a reality. The person he believes himself to be is a bad dream.

  Thomas Merton

  Dream, Believe, Men

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.48, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

  Thomas Merton

  Attitude, Acceptance, Self

  4 Copy quote

• A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions, is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of "choice" when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.

  Thomas Merton

  Freedom, Choices, Tasks

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.6, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Love winter when the plant says nothing.

  Thomas Merton

  Winter, Plant, Winter Love

  Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.353, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Love is a special way of being alive.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is, Special, Alive

  5 Copy quote

• If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."

  Thomas Merton

  Glasses, Color, Consciousness

  Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon (2010). “Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation”, p.222, Bloomsbury Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.

  Thomas Merton

  Sweet, Dark, Wife

  Thomas Merton (1981). “Day of a stranger”

  8 Copy quote

• The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Egypt, Land

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

  5 Copy quote

• Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Strong, Real

  5 Copy quote

• The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Lying, Errors

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.212, Shambhala Publications

  4 Copy quote

• A daydream is an evasion.

  Thomas Merton

  Daydreaming, Evasion

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.27, Image

  8 Copy quote

• The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Evil, Temptation

  5 Copy quote

• Violence is essentially wordless. and it can begin only where thought and rational communication have broken down.

  Thomas Merton

  Communication, Broken, Violence

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Silence, Grace, May

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.179, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

Page 21 of 25

First

← Prev

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin