Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 9

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We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of others and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.

Thomas Merton

Forgiveness, Hate, Compassion

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First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?

Thomas Merton

Responsibility, Destiny, Men

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Passion, Light

Thomas Merton (2009). “A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960”, p.39, Harper Collins

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Humility is a virtue, not a neurosis.

Thomas Merton

Christian, Religious, Humility

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.73, Macmillan

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In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself," I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.

Thomas Merton

Being Yourself, Age, Littles

Thomas Merton (1974). “A Thomas Merton Reader”, Image

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One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

Thomas Merton

Contemplative Life, Law, Down And

Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.23, Shambhala Publications

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Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint...They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems.

Thomas Merton

Religious, Writing, Artist

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.98, New Directions Publishing

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The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is in fact an intensification of life a completeness a fullness a wholeness of life.

Thomas Merton

Philosophy, Philosophical, Love Is

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To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Peace, Demand

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Take more time, cover less ground.

Thomas Merton

Patience, Focus, Mindfulness

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One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

Thomas Merton

Inspirational, Men, Mind Your Own Business

Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.259, Shambhala Publications

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To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Lying, Frustration

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

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Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.

Thomas Merton

Thinking, Grace, Unconscious

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We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295)

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Real, Two

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Solitude, Way

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The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

Thomas Merton

Compassion, Ideas, Purpose

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As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.

Thomas Merton

Long, Shows, Knows

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.112, Macmillan

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The danger of education, I have found, is that it so easily confuses means with ends. Worse than that, it quite easily forgets both and devotes itself merely to the mass production of uneducated gradtuates - people literaly unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade which they and their contemporaries have conspired to call "life".

Thomas Merton

Mean, People, Atheism

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.14, Macmillan

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The root of war is fear.

Thomas Merton

War, Roots

Thomas Merton (1995). “Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis”, p.50, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.

Thomas Merton

Men, Mercy Of God, May

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.228, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Temptation, Simple Life

Forbes, August 4, 1980.

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To be truly Catholic is not merely to be correct according to an abstractly universal standard of truth, but also and above all to be able to enter into the problems and the joys of all, to understand all, to be all things to all.

Thomas Merton

Joy, Catholic, Able

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Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

Thomas Merton

Courage, Listening, Quiet

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.191, University of Notre Dame Pess

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And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.

Thomas Merton

Believe, Journey, Men

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In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

Thomas Merton

Responsibility, Self Improvement, Analysis

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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

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