Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 21

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The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

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For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Light, Darkness

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

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It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Strong, Heart

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.206, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Because of their enmity you will be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you.

Thomas Merton

Enmity, Left Alone, Casts

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.53, New City Press

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When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago.

Thomas Merton

Discovery, Years, Found

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

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All men who live only according to their five senses, and seek nothing beyond the gratification of their natural appetites for pleasure and reputation and power, cut themselves off from that charity which is the principle of all spiritual vitality and happiness because it alone saves us from the barren wilderness of our own abominable selfishness.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Cutting, Men

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.172, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The whole world has risen in Christ... If God is 'all in all,' then everything is in fact paradise, because it is filled with the glory and presence of God, and nothing is any more separated from God.

Thomas Merton

World, Paradise, Facts

Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.822, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do.

Thomas Merton

Happiness, Thinking, Ideas

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I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may meanI myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Book, Self

Thomas Merton (2015). “Charter, Customs, and Constitutions of the Cistercians: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 7”, p.10, Liturgical Press

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In the natural order no matter what ideals may be theoretically possible, most people more or less live for themselves and for their own interests and pleasures or for those of their own family or group, and therefore they are constantly interfering with one another's aims, and hurting one another and injuring one another, whether they mean it or not.

Thomas Merton

Hurt, Mean, Order

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Father, Mean

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To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk about dynamism sounds foolish.

Thomas Merton

Christian, Church, Way

Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.148, Shambhala Publications

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You will never be able to have perfect interior peace and recollection unless you are detached even from the desire of peace and recollection. You will never be able to pray perfectly until you are detached from the pleasures of prayer.

Thomas Merton

Prayer, Perfect, Desire

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

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O God, my God, the night has values that the day never dreamed of.

Thomas Merton

Night, Values

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For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion.

Thomas Merton

Mean, Acceptance, Doubt

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

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It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone.

Thomas Merton

Humility, Journey, Men

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.100, New Directions Publishing

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Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia.

Thomas Merton

Memories, Past, True Identity

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.106, New Directions Publishing

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Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.

Thomas Merton

Best Love, Love Is, Perfect

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.139, Shambhala Publications

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Business is not the supreme virtue, and sanctity is not measured by the amount of work we accomplish. Perfection is found in the purity of our love for God, and this pure love is a delicate plant that grows best where there is plenty of time for it to mature

Thomas Merton

Love Is, Perfection, Our Love

Thomas Merton (1960). “Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.85, Liturgical Press

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I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Stupid, Silly

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It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am, the more affection I have for them. It is pure affection, and filled with reverance for the solitude of others. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

Thomas Merton

Single, Brother, Silence

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.280, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation: that which is All, and which therefore is no limited or individual thing: The All is no-thing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be All.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Appreciation, Liberty

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.58, Sounds True

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Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.

Thomas Merton

Doe, Sake, Way

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Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.

Thomas Merton

Religious, Book, People

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One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.

Thomas Merton

Humility, Acceptance, Sacrifice

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

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