Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 12

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• Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.

  Thomas Merton

  Keys, Finals, Answers

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.130, New Directions Publishing

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• I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Thorns, Penance

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

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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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• To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.

  Thomas Merton

  Too Much, Privacy

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

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• To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Being Single, Being Alone

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.3, Shambhala Publications

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• The only unhappiness is not to love God.

  Thomas Merton

  God Love, Unhappiness

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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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• Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

  Thomas Merton

  Motivational, Men, Order

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

  Thomas Merton

  Eternity, Contemplation, This Life

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

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• Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice �out there� calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice �in here� calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Self, Voice

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• The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

  Thomas Merton

  Silence, Solitude, Speech

  Thomas Merton (1996). “Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk & Writer”, Harper San Francisco

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• When ambition ends, happiness begins.

  Thomas Merton

  Ambition, Ambitious, Ends

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• My best writing has always been in journals.

  Thomas Merton

  Writing, Journal

  Thomas Merton, Lawrence Cunningham (1996). “A search for solitude: pursuing the monk's true life”, Harper San Francisco

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• A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.... The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Giving, Tree

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.29, New Directions Publishing

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• The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.129, Macmillan

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• God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, True Self, Creator

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.41, New Directions Publishing

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• For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Mean, Self

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

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• Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Men

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

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• Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, War, Sacrifice

  Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.35, Macmillan

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• This act of total surrender is not merely a fantastic intellectual and mystical gamble; it is something much more serious. It is an act of love for this unseen person, who, in the very gift of love by which we surrender ourselves to his reality also makes his presence known to us.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Reality, Intellectual

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• The psychological impotence of our enraged generation must be traced to the overwhelming accusation of insincerity which every man and woman has to confront, in the depths of his own soul, when he seeks to love merely for his own pleasure.And yet the men of our time do not love with enough courage to risk even discomfort or inconvenience.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Soul, Risk

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• Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Athlete, Soul

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.

  Thomas Merton

  Reality, Mirrors, Light

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

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• When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.

  Thomas Merton

  Prayer, Silence, World

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.106, Macmillan

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• A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

  Thomas Merton

  Despair, May, Hopeless

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

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