Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 16

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• The problem today is that there are no deserts, only dude ranches.

  Thomas Merton

  Desert, Today, Problem

  Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.19, New Directions Publishing

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• If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Heart, Carpe Diem

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.30, Macmillan

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• What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

  Thomas Merton

  Rain, Night, Long

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• The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it.

  Thomas Merton

  Believe, Angel, Grace

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• Things that are good are good, and if one is responding to that goodness one is in contact with a truth from which one is getting something. The truth is doing us good. The truth of the sunshine, the truth of the rain, the truth of the fresh air, the truth of the wind in the trees, these are truths. And they are always accessible!

  Thomas Merton

  Rain, Sunshine, Air

  "Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected".

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• Love is free; it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.

  Thomas Merton

  Love Is, Doe, Sake

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

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• Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.

  Thomas Merton

  Meditation, Decision, Matter

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.105, Macmillan

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• O God, teach me to be satisfied with my own helplessness in the spiritual life. Teach me to be content with Your grace that comes to me in darkness and that works things I cannot see. Teach me to be happy that I can depend on You. To depend on You should be enough for an eternity of joy. To depend on You by itself ought to be infinitely greater than any joy which my own intellectual appetite could desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Joy, Grace

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• But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Silence, Solitude

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.373, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair. Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Spiritual, Sunshine

  Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.190, Shambhala Publications

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• Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.

  Thomas Merton

  Destiny, Thinking, Our Destiny

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.31, Macmillan

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• You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Doubt, Know How

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.105, New Directions Publishing

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• We who claim to love peace and justice must always be careful that we do not use our righteousness to provoke the violent, and in this way bring about the conflict for which we, too, like other men, are hungering in secret, and with suppressed barbarity.

  Thomas Merton

  Ignorance, Men, Justice

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• Love is our true destiny.

  Thomas Merton

  Famous Love, Love Is, Destiny

  Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.32, Macmillan

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• The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Lonely, Loneliness

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• A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

  Thomas Merton

  Reality, Destiny, Men

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.31, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Peace, Men

  Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

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• Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.

  Thomas Merton

  Humility, Illusion, Withdrawing

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.73, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• It is true to say that for me sanctity consists in being myself and for you sanctity consists of being yourself and that, in the last analysis, your sanctity will never be mine and mine will never be yours, except in the communism of charity and grace. 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

  Being Yourself, Mean, Who I Am

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• We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen.

  Thomas Merton

  Slow Down, Tempo, Humans

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

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• This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Crucifixion Of Christ, Joy, Grace

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.158, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Light

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• If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.

  Thomas Merton

  Simplicity, Overcoming, Firsts

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.213, Shambhala Publications

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• The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is exiled constantly from his own home, locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person.

  Thomas Merton

  Happy, Spiritual, Peace

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• We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Light, Dwelling

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