Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly
  themselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Relationship, Unconditional Love, Reflection

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.177, Shambhala Publications

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• We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, True Life, Life Is

  Thomas Merton (2008). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.35, Sounds True

  67 Copy quote

• The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

  Thomas Merton

  Hate, Men, Sweat

  Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.72, Shambhala Publications

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• It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!

  Thomas Merton

  War, Believe, Roof Over Your Head

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.179, New Directions Publishing

  97 Copy quote

• Here is an unspeakable secret: paradise is all around us and we do not understand.

  Thomas Merton

  Secret, Paradise, Unspeakable

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.128, Image

  34 Copy quote

• A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Succeed

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.133, Shambhala Publications

  33 Copy quote

• We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Courage, Men

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.312, Image

  49 Copy quote

• Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

  Thomas Merton

  Gratitude, Grace, Moments

  74 Copy quote

• I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Race, People

  55 Copy quote

• Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.

  Thomas Merton

  Doors, Knowing, Way

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.136, Macmillan

  36 Copy quote

• In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.

  Thomas Merton

  Important, Devil, Theology

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.96, New Directions Publishing

  23 Copy quote

• Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Book, Love You

  45 Copy quote

• Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Country, Art

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

  23 Copy quote

• At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.

  Thomas Merton

  God, Spiritual, Truth

  Thomas Merton (2012). “On Christian Contemplation”, p.41, New Directions Publishing

  64 Copy quote

• From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.

  Thomas Merton

  Pieces, World, Mouths

  44 Copy quote

• Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Yoga, Voice

  19 Copy quote

• A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, God, Spiritual

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

  64 Copy quote

• We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Passion, Order

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.173, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  33 Copy quote

• The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Pain, Fall

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.92, Shambhala Publications

  31 Copy quote

• True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Encounters, Christ

  "He is risen".

  39 Copy quote

• It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is the beginning of blessedness and the consummation of humility is the perfection of all joy. Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul. It is the only key to faith, with which the spiritual life begins: for faith and humility are inseparable. In perfect humility all selfishness disappears and your soul no longer lives for itself or in itself for God: and it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Humility, Keys

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.181, New Directions Publishing

  48 Copy quote

• Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Gratitude, Realization

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.1, New Directions Publishing

  34 Copy quote

• Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By "they" I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Rain, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.9, New Directions Publishing

  57 Copy quote

• No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Answers, He Man

  Thomas Merton (2012). “On Eastern Meditation”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

  22 Copy quote

• The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Wisdom, Real

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.387, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  24 Copy quote

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