Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 15

Quotes about:

Acceptance Acting Age Ambition Angels Anxiety Art

One of the most important-and most neglected-elements in the beginning of the interior life is the ability to respond to reality, to see the value and the beauty in ordinary things, to come alive to the splendour that is all around us.

Thomas Merton

Beauty, Reality, Important

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.33, Shambhala Publications

9 Copy quote
Stop asking yourself questions that have no meaning. Or if they have, you'll find out when you need to -- find out both the questions and the answers.

Thomas Merton

Needs, Asking, Answers

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.166, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

5 Copy quote
God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend. We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves, substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction.

Thomas Merton

Faith, Inspiration, Self

Thomas Merton, Ernesto Cardenal (2017). “From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal”, p.312, Counterpoint Press

14 Copy quote
Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.

Thomas Merton

Thinking, Discovery, Years

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

12 Copy quote
Love is its own reward.

Thomas Merton

Love You, Unconditional Love, Love Is

9 Copy quote
Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to people not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of humans led them further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.

Thomas Merton

Nature, Rain, Moon

8 Copy quote
There is in us an instinct for newness, for renewal, for a liberation of creative power. We seek to awaken in ourselves a force which really changes our lives from within. And yet the same instinct tells us that this change is a recovery of that which is deepest, most original, most personal in ourselves. To be born again is not to become somebody else, but to become ourselves.

Thomas Merton

Recovery, Creative, Instinct

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.52, Sounds True

20 Copy quote
We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' is a matter of sense and sensibility. Nevertheless, if we really love others it will not be too hard to like them also.

Thomas Merton

Matter, Love One Another, Nevertheless

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.193, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

4 Copy quote
Stop thinking and start looking.

Thomas Merton

Thinking

John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.18, World Wisdom, Inc

8 Copy quote
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Destiny, Work Out

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.10, New Directions Publishing

14 Copy quote
...love triumphs, at least in this life, not by eliminating evil once for all, but by resisting and overcoming it anew every day.

Thomas Merton

Evil, Overcoming, Triumph

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.13, New Directions Publishing

8 Copy quote
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.

Thomas Merton

Voice, Able, Spirituality

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

6 Copy quote
To be ordinary is not a choice: It is the usual freedom of men without visions.

Thomas Merton

Men, Choices, Vision

Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.280, New Directions Publishing

6 Copy quote
I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.

Thomas Merton

Knowing, Space, Silence

5 Copy quote
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.

Thomas Merton

Loneliness, Being Alone, Profound

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

11 Copy quote
I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.

Thomas Merton

Despair, Found, I Have Learned

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.228, New City Press

8 Copy quote
To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

Thomas Merton

Men, Opposites, Proud

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.50, Macmillan

8 Copy quote
It is not only our hatred of others that is dangerous but also and above all our hatred of ourselves: particularly that hatred of ourselves which is too deep and too powerful to be consciously faced. For it is this which makes us see our own evil in others and unable to see it in ourselves.

Thomas Merton

Powerful, Evil, Hatred

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.112, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

Thomas Merton

Hate, Mercy Of God, Silence

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

9 Copy quote
Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.

Thomas Merton

Heart, Meditation, Doubt

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

9 Copy quote
Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.

Thomas Merton

Light, Silence, Soul

"Thoughts in Solitude". Book by Thomas Merton, 1956.

9 Copy quote
Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.

Thomas Merton

Giving, Perspective, Silence

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.49, Macmillan

6 Copy quote
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a hurry to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.

Thomas Merton

Integrity, Artist, Haste

Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.101, Shambhala Publications

8 Copy quote
If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Decision, Useless

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.105, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

8 Copy quote
Spread abroad the name of Jesus in humility and with a meek heart; show him your feebleness, and he will become your strength.

Thomas Merton

Jesus, Humility, Heart

6 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Anthony de Mello

John of the Cross

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

John Howard Griffin

Thomas Merton

Follow

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

Popular Topics