Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 10

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• The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Light

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Failure, Fall

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.53, Macmillan

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• I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Catholic, Gods Will, I Can

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

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• The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Truth, Errors

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.246, Shambhala Publications

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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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• Prayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.

  Thomas Merton

  Prayer, Expression, Who We Are

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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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 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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• The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.

  Thomas Merton

  Sweet, Heart, Dark

  Thomas Merton (1997). “Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage”, HarperOne

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• Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Teaching, Unique, Doors

  John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.21, World Wisdom, Inc

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• If you have love you will do all things well.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Inspirational, Wells

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• 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

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• To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

  Thomas Merton

  Light, Events, Hell

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

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• It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Order

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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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• The Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves--and perhaps very badly needed in India: they want to know if we have any saints to send them.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, School, Men

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.240, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The least of the work of learning is done in classrooms.

  Thomas Merton

  Learning, Done, Classroom

  "Love and Living".

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• In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Reality, Ends

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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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• The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Self, Jewels

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

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• There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Visible, Wholeness

  "In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton".

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• Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

  Thomas Merton

  Two, Doe, Compare

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.2, Shambhala Publications

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