Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 23

Quotes about:

Acceptance Acting Age Ambition Angels Anxiety Art

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork.

Thomas Merton

Fighting, Violence, Form

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.81, Image

7 Copy quote
To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.

Thomas Merton

Real, Being Single, Being Alone

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.3, Shambhala Publications

9 Copy quote
I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Stupid, Silly

5 Copy quote
The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.

Thomas Merton

Order, Complacency, Vices

4 Copy quote
Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.

Thomas Merton

Mercy Of God, Needs, Ashes

Thomas Merton (1976). “Meditations on liturgy”

24 Copy quote
Pardon all runners, All speechless, alien winds, All mad waters. Pardon their impulses, Their wild attitudes, Their young flights, their reticence. When a message has no clothes on How can it be spoken.

Thomas Merton

Attitude, Wind, Clothes

Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.351, New Directions Publishing

4 Copy quote
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children.

Thomas Merton

Children, Autumn, Night

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

7 Copy quote
To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Men, Order

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.92, Shambhala Publications

5 Copy quote
And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, College, Hands

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

9 Copy quote
To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with God above sense and experience in the darkness of a pure and perfect love.

Thomas Merton

Perfect, Soul, Darkness

Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.214, Shambhala Publications

5 Copy quote
But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

Thomas Merton

Mistake, Ambition, Together

5 Copy quote
You pray best when the mirror of your soul is empty of every image except the Image of the Invisible Father.

Thomas Merton

Father, Mirrors, Soul

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.128, Macmillan

4 Copy quote
You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, New York, Feet

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

5 Copy quote
The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Awful, Lasts

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.14, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes.

Thomas Merton

Gratitude, Writing, Simple

5 Copy quote
I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope. . . there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk.

Thomas Merton

Acceptance, People, Risk

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.6, Sounds True

4 Copy quote
I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them - the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.

Thomas Merton

Sweet, College, Years

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.156, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

17 Copy quote
October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all.

Thomas Merton

Ambition, August, Blood

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

11 Copy quote
In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.

Thomas Merton

Men, Contemplative Life, Self

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.86, New Directions Publishing

4 Copy quote
It might be good to open our eyes and see.

Thomas Merton

Eye, Vision, Might

Thomas Merton (2010). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

4 Copy quote
Are they moved by a sense of human need for silence, for reflection, for inner seeking? So they want to get away from the noise and tension of modern life, at least for a little while, in order to relax their minds and wills and seek a blessed healing sense of inner unity, reconciliation, integration?

Thomas Merton

Blessed, Healing, Reflection

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.44, Macmillan

5 Copy quote
Nonviolence seeks to ‘win’ not by destroying or even by humiliating the adversary, but by convincing [the adversary] that there is a higher and more certain common good than can be attained by bombs and blood. Nonviolence, ideally speaking, does not try to overcome the adversary by winning over [them], but to turn [them] from an adversary into a collaborator by winning [them] over.

Thomas Merton

Winning, Blood, Trying

Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.192, Macmillan

4 Copy quote
Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.

Thomas Merton

Fire, Victory, Wheels

Thomas Merton (1997). “Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage”, HarperOne

9 Copy quote
We must suffer. Our five sense are dulled by inordinate pleasure. Penance makes them keen, gives them back their natural vitality, and more. Penance clears the eye of conscience and of reason. It helps think clearly, judge sanely. It strengthens the action of our will.

Thomas Merton

Eye, Thinking, Giving

"Thoughts in Solitude". Book by Thomas Merton, 1956.

16 Copy quote
For pride, which is the inordinate attribution of goods and values and glories to one's own contingent self, cannot exist where there is no contingent self to which anything can be attributed.

Thomas Merton

Pride, Self, Glory

5 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Anthony de Mello

John of the Cross

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

John Howard Griffin

Thomas Merton

Follow

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

Popular Topics