Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 4

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• It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.

  Thomas Merton

  Humanity, Belief, Awareness

  103 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

  54 Copy quote

• The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Hurt, Insignificant Things

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  59 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

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• The biggest disease in North America is busyness.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Inspiration, America

  5 Copy quote

• Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Spiritual, Exercise

  "The Wisdom of the Desert".

  30 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

  43 Copy quote

• For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Destiny, Want

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.138, Shambhala Publications

  79 Copy quote

• We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation.

  Thomas Merton

  Revolution, Transformation, Endless

  43 Copy quote

• My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

  Thomas Merton

  Shadow Of Death, Ideas, May

  42 Copy quote

• May God prevent us from becoming "right-thinking men"-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.

  Thomas Merton

  Men, Thinking, Police

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.248, Image

  83 Copy quote

• I see no contradiction between Buddhism and Christianity ... I intend to become as good a Buddhist as I can.

  Thomas Merton

  Buddhist, Buddhism, Christianity

  58 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

  18 Copy quote

• We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us.

  Thomas Merton

  Giving, Ifs, Known

  John Howard Griffin, Thomas Merton (1970). “A hidden wholeness: the visual world of Thomas Merton”, Mariner Books

  38 Copy quote

• Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Struggle, Reality

  "A Poetic Hope" by Cassidy Hall, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 8, 2017.

  18 Copy quote

• The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.

  Thomas Merton

  Suffering Pain, World Suffering, People

  Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  38 Copy quote

• You are made in the image of what you desire.

  Thomas Merton

  Desire, Spiritual Awakening, Made

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

  76 Copy quote

• For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Fall, Air

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.218, Shambhala Publications

  46 Copy quote

• The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

  Thomas Merton

  God, Kindness, Compassion

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.22, Sounds True

  68 Copy quote

• Weaknesses and deficiencies . . . play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

  Thomas Merton

  Play, Important, Weakness

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.22, Shambhala Publications

  61 Copy quote

• When I pray for peace, I pray not only that the enemies of my own country may cease to want war, but above all that my country will cease to do the things that make war inevitable.

  Thomas Merton

  Country, Peace, War

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.121, New Directions Publishing

  48 Copy quote

• The deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept. Not that we discover a new unity. We discover an older unity. My dear Brothers [and Sisters], we are already one. But we imagine that we are not. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are.

  Thomas Merton

  Brother, Communication, Unity

  Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.13, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  34 Copy quote

• In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work with expecting immediate reward, to love without an instant satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Order, Special, Rewards

  19 Copy quote

• What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Giving, Firsts

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

  59 Copy quote

• What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

  Thomas Merton

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Moon

  Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.35, Sounds True

  31 Copy quote

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