Thomas Merton Quotes

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Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.

Thomas Merton

Love, Spiritual, Wisdom

Thomas Merton (1976). “The Power and Meaning of Love”

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You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.

Thomas Merton

Moving On, Faith, Courage

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.206, Image

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The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Thomas Merton

Relationship, Spiritual, Inspirational Love

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The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Emotional, Mind

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.72, Image

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In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In such places love can blossom.

Thomas Merton

Discipline, Confusion, Silence

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My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

Thomas Merton

Faith, Believe, Inspiration

Thomas Merton (2009). “Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings”, p.8, Harper Collins

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To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

Thomas Merton

Faith, Gratitude, Grateful

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Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn't already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Thomas Merton

Wind, Tree, Forests

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In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

Thomas Merton

Silence, Objects, Cease

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The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. 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 violence. The frenzy of our activity neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

Thomas Merton

Roots, Demand, Want

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People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

Thomas Merton

Wall, Climbing, People

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When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

Thomas Merton

Grace

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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

Thomas Merton

Love, Valentines Day, Fate

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.32, Macmillan

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In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work with expecting immediate reward, to love without an instant satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves.

Thomas Merton

Order, Special, Rewards

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Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.

Thomas Merton

Ordinary, Alive, Ordinary Things

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Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.

Thomas Merton

Love Is, Making Love, Getting What You Want

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.40, Macmillan

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Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

Thomas Merton

Real, Heart, Journey

Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.296, New Directions Publishing

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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

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Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.

Thomas Merton

Compassion, Awareness, Loving Kindness

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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, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.

Thomas Merton

Life, Children, Heart

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Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.

Thomas Merton

Peace, Hate, War

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Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live.

Thomas Merton

Journey, Differences, Joy

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

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When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.

Thomas Merton

Country, Peace, War

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.121, New Directions Publishing

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It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.

Thomas Merton

Humanity, Belief, Awareness

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To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

Thomas Merton

Love, Life, Wisdom

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.60, New Directions Publishing

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

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