Thomas Merton Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  320 Copy quote

• 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”

  302 Copy quote

• 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

  203 Copy quote

• 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

  334 Copy quote
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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

  190 Copy quote

• 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

  375 Copy quote

• 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

  113 Copy quote

• 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

  188 Copy quote

• 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

  98 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Merton

  Silence, Objects, Cease

  111 Copy quote

• 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

  163 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Merton

  Grace

  59 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

• Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

  Thomas Merton

  Names, Numbers, Giving

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

  13 Copy quote

• Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Fools Day, Finding Yourself

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.35, Shambhala Publications

  118 Copy quote

• If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never be able to write anything that can be read. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn.

  Thomas Merton

  Freedom, Writing, Helping Others

  Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.198, Shambhala Publications

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  203 Copy quote

• The sky is my prayer, the birds are my prayer, the wind in the trees is my prayer, for God is all in all.

  Thomas Merton

  Prayer, Wind, Sky

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.107, Macmillan

  21 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Merton

  Compassion, Awareness, Loving Kindness

  165 Copy quote

• Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Wisdom, Fake People

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.119, Shambhala Publications

  79 Copy quote

• A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Succeed

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.133, Shambhala Publications

  32 Copy quote

• 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

  57 Copy quote

• The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Firsts, Life Is

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.52, Macmillan

  97 Copy quote

• Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Ideas

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.15, New Directions Publishing

  47 Copy quote

• Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

  Thomas Merton

  Gratitude, Grace, Moments

  73 Copy quote

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