Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Thinking

  30 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

  33 Copy quote

• Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

  Thomas Merton (1966). “Raids on the Unspeakable”, p.6, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Men, Mind Your Own Business

  Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.259, Shambhala Publications

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  66 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

  24 Copy quote

• We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, Catholic, Humanity

  Thomas Merton (1994). “Ascent To Truth”, p.246, Bloomsbury Publishing

  37 Copy quote

• Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Heart, Capacity To Love, Giving

  Thomas Merton (2010). “Seasons of Celebration”, p.103, Macmillan

  24 Copy quote

• 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

  23 Copy quote

• Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live.

  Thomas Merton

  Journey, Differences, Joy

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

  81 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

  62 Copy quote

• 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

  96 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

  23 Copy quote

• Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Violence, Cease

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.129, Macmillan

  42 Copy quote

• The basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Cutting, Reality, Long

  "The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters".

  26 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

  22 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

  63 Copy quote

• Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger.

  Thomas Merton

  Thinking, Awakening, Facts

  "The New Man".

  62 Copy quote

• Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Men, Risk

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

  79 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

  22 Copy quote

• A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.

  Thomas Merton

  People

  "Seeds".

  66 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".

  38 Copy quote

• In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

  Thomas Merton

  Heart, Humility, Thinking

  46 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

  48 Copy quote

• Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.

  Thomas Merton

  Selfish, Believe, Men

  37 Copy quote

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