Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

  Thomas Merton

  Strength, Being Strong, Confidence

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.143, Image

  49 Copy quote

• If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

  Thomas Merton

  Being Single, Being Alone, Heart

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.121, Shambhala Publications

  11 Copy quote

• We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Passion, Order

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.173, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  32 Copy quote

• Every moment and every event of every man's life on earth plants something in his soul.

  Thomas Merton

  Uplifting, Men, Soul

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

  94 Copy quote

• For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture.

  Thomas Merton

  Power, Men, Guarantees

  Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.213, Macmillan

  48 Copy quote

• The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.

  Thomas Merton

  Attitude, Real, Fundamentals

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.124, Sounds True

  11 Copy quote

• The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Moral, Kind

  Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.378, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Rain, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.9, New Directions Publishing

  56 Copy quote

• And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

  Thomas Merton

  Strong, Night, Soul

  7 Copy quote

• Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.

  Thomas Merton

  Thanksgiving, Knowledge Of God, Rejoice

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.46, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the sky and see the utter nonsense of everything including all the solemn stuff given out by professional asses about the spiritual life; and simply to burst out laughing, and laugh and laugh, with the sky and the trees because God is not in words, and not in systems, and not in liturgical movements, and not in "contemplation" with a big "C," or in asceticism or in anything like that, not even in the apostolate.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Laughter, Sky

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.35, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  12 Copy quote

• We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to "like" one another.

  Thomas Merton

  Best Love, Love One Another, Obliged

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.178, Shambhala Publications

  23 Copy quote

• A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

  Thomas Merton

  Happiness, Enough, Bigs

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.1, Shambhala Publications

  35 Copy quote

• We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Decisions You Make, Self

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.25, Shambhala Publications

  15 Copy quote

• As long as I continue to take myself seriously, how can I consider myself a saint? How can I consider myself a contemplative? For the self I bother about does not really exist, never will, never did except in my own imagination.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Self, Long

  9 Copy quote

• There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Problem, Existence

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

  Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Prayer, Leisure

  Thomas Merton, (2013). “Thomas Merton - Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.51, Read Books Ltd

  25 Copy quote

• There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts.. see within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me..it was magical. "We are already one, yet we know it not.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Heaven, House

  26 Copy quote

• A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Mean, Essence

  "New Seeds of Contemplation". Book by Thomas Merton, 1972.

  11 Copy quote

• We do not exist for ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Happiness, Success

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

  16 Copy quote

• Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, War, Fall

  18 Copy quote

• The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Sadness, Reality

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

  12 Copy quote

• After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Thinking, Self

  "Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings".

  22 Copy quote

• The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Atheist, Real

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.213, Shambhala Publications

  11 Copy quote

Page 6 of 25

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin