Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 7

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• You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work out speedily and efficiently as we would like them to. The reason for this is not only the loving wisdom of God, but also the fact that our acts have to fit into a great complex pattern that we cannot possibly understand. I have learned over the years that Providence is always a whole lot wiser than any of us, and that there are always not only good reasons, but the very best reasons for the delays and blocks that often seem to us so frustrating and absurd.

  Thomas Merton

  Block, Years, Ideas

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.862, Macmillan

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• Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal law of love. Gandhi, quoted in Merton, p. 38

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Wisdom, Jesus

  50 Copy quote

• The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

  Thomas Merton

  Gratitude, Grateful, Differences

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.48, Macmillan

  33 Copy quote

• Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Worry

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

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• To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.

  Thomas Merton

  Thanksgiving, Gratitude, Grateful

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.48, Macmillan

  38 Copy quote

• Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Self, Cherish

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

  30 Copy quote

• The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter.

  Thomas Merton

  People, Important, Might

  Thomas Merton (1989). “Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

  26 Copy quote

• The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, Ubuntu, Violence

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.207, Shambhala Publications

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• God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, May, Sometimes

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.250, Shambhala Publications

  22 Copy quote

• The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.

  Thomas Merton

  God, Hope, Religious

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.434, Macmillan

  43 Copy quote

• It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

  Thomas Merton

  Mistake, Destiny, Race

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.154, Image

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• Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Our World, Anxiety, World

  Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.115, New City Press

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• To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration.

  Thomas Merton

  Frustration, Risk, Mind

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.104, New Directions Publishing

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• We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Believe, Struggle

  28 Copy quote

• The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

  Thomas Merton

  Positive, Love Is, Law Of Attraction

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Father, Men

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.189, Shambhala Publications

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• The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis, but first of all by living. For until we have begun to live our prudence has no material to work on. And until we have begun to fail we have no way of working out our success.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Work Out, Analysis

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• Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.

  Thomas Merton

  Found

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

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• The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Attitude, Men

  Thomas Merton (1960). “Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.16, Liturgical Press

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• What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspiring, Life Changing, Moon

  Thomas Merton (1970). “The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Artist, Soul

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

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• By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

  Thomas Merton

  Music, Reading, Blue

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• Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

  Thomas Merton

  Destiny, Special, Want

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.138, Shambhala Publications

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• Love is the door to eternity.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Love Is, Doors

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.134, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.

  Thomas Merton

  Being True, Manifest, Knows

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.198, Shambhala Publications

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