Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 23

Quotes about:

Acceptance Acting Age Ambition Angels Anxiety Art

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

Thomas Merton

College, America, Looks

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

8 Copy quote
October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all.

Thomas Merton

Ambition, August, Blood

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

11 Copy quote
God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!

Thomas Merton

Mercy, Blindness, Seeking

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

5 Copy quote
That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.

Thomas Merton

People, Kind, Felt

Thomas Merton (1989). “Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters”, p.73, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children.

Thomas Merton

Children, Autumn, Night

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

7 Copy quote
It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Jesus, Able

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

4 Copy quote
Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.

Thomas Merton

Men, Facts, Made

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.34, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

5 Copy quote
Love winter when the plant says nothing.

Thomas Merton

Winter, Plant, Winter Love

Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.353, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as "new men" regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Son, Men

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

8 Copy quote
There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

Thomas Merton

Attitude, Acceptance, Self

4 Copy quote
Whose silence are you?

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Silence

Thomas Merton, Lynn Szabo (2005). “In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.90, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Egypt, Land

Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

5 Copy quote
The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Lying, Errors

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.212, Shambhala Publications

4 Copy quote
The simplicity that all this presupposes is not easy to attain. I find that my life constantly threatens to become complex and divisive. A life of prayer is basically a very simple life. This simplicity, however, is the result of asceticism and effort: it is not a spontaneous simplicity.

Thomas Merton

Prayer, Simple, Simplicity

8 Copy quote
Teach me to take all grace / And spring it into blades of act, / Grow spears and sheaves of charity, / While each new instant, (new eternity) / Flowering with clean and individual circumstance, / Speaks me the whisper of [God's] consecrating Spirit. / Then will obedience bring forth new Incarnations / Shining to God with the features of [the Lord's] Christ.

Thomas Merton

Spring, Shining, Grace

5 Copy quote
Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Strong, Real

5 Copy quote
As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Men, Fire

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.150, New Directions Publishing

8 Copy quote
The primordial blessing, 'increase and multiply', has suddenly become a hemorrhage of terror. We are numbered in billions, and massed together, marshalled, numbered, marched here and there, taxed, drilled, armed, worked to the point of insensibility, dazed by information, drugged by entertainment, surfeited with everything, nauseated with the human race and with ourselves, nauseated with life.

Thomas Merton

Blessing, Race, Together

Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.70, New Directions Publishing

4 Copy quote
There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Wisdom, Reality

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.18, Macmillan

4 Copy quote
A daydream is an evasion.

Thomas Merton

Daydreaming, Evasion

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.27, Image

9 Copy quote
Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Saint, Sanctity

Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

11 Copy quote
First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the "wilderness of upper Egypt" to "wander in dry places." Thirst drives man mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence--lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

Thomas Merton

Country, Men, Egypt

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.21, Macmillan

18 Copy quote
Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.

Thomas Merton

Self, Firsts, Superficial

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

5 Copy quote
Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

Thomas Merton

Wisdom, Hate, Mean

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

4 Copy quote
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Thomas Merton

Spiritual, Society, Degradation

7 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