Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 14

Quotes about:

• We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

  Thomas Merton

  Meditation

  Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon (2010). “Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation”, p.52, Bloomsbury Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Heart, Expression

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.220, Shambhala Publications

  13 Copy quote

• If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Want, Life Is

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.64, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Worship, Hell

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.26, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.

  Thomas Merton

  Praise, Praise God, Adore

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

  10 Copy quote

• We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Needs, Firsts

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.248, Shambhala Publications

  9 Copy quote

• To Serve the God of Love one must be free, one must face the terrible responsibility of the decision to love in spite of all unworthiness whether in oneself or in one's neighbor.

  Thomas Merton

  Responsibility, Decision, Faces

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.74, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• For me to be a saint means to be myself.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Saint

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

  10 Copy quote

• As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate.

  Thomas Merton

  Pain, Hate, Love Is

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.72, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• One has to be alone, under the sky, Before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in the midst of it all. We have to have the humility to realize ourselves as part of nature.

  Thomas Merton

  Fall, Humility, Sky

  10 Copy quote

• We do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.

  Thomas Merton

  Order, Answers, May

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.119, Macmillan

  10 Copy quote

• Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is, Poverty, Epiphany

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.254, Macmillan

  28 Copy quote

• This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Powerful, Block

  Thomas Merton (1968). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.109, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• You are certainly one of the joys of life for all who have ever come within a mile of you.

  Thomas Merton

  Joy, Miles, Joy Of Life

  Thomas Merton (1989). “The Road to Joy: Letters to New and Old Friends”, p.71, Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

• The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil.

  Thomas Merton

  Jobs, Offering, Suffering

  5 Copy quote

• The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Contemplative Life, Discovery

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.

  Thomas Merton

  Change, Money, Men

  Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.8, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Long, Forever

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.462, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  6 Copy quote

• The goal of fasting is inner unity.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Goal, Unity

  Thomas Merton (2004). “The Way of Chuang Tzu”, p.54, Shambhala Publications

  15 Copy quote

• Love is an intensification of life.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is

  8 Copy quote

• Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.

  Thomas Merton

  Humility, Errors, Sincerity

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.

  Thomas Merton

  Crow, Mind, Glitter

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.104, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

  Thomas Merton

  Simple, Reality, Silence

  5 Copy quote

• The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Evil, Guilt

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Hate, Men

  10 Copy quote

Page 14 of 25

First

← Prev

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin