Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 5

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• 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

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• 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

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• It's a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. . . . The fact is, though, that if you descend into the depths of your own spirit and arrive somewhere near the center of what you are, you are confronted with the inescapable truth that, at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Prayer, Roots, Facts

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• How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

  Thomas Merton

  Journey, Men, Cities

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

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• In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.

  Thomas Merton

  Shopping, People, Louisville

  Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.55, New City Press

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• 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

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• We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.

  Thomas Merton

  Being True, Manifest, Knows

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.198, Shambhala Publications

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• Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its cliches, it would be time to call in the undertaker... So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me in fact to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life.

  Thomas Merton

  Moving, New Beginnings, Worry

  Thomas Merton (2008). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.90, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Inspiration, Wind

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• The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Prayer, Leisure

  Thomas Merton, (2013). “Thomas Merton - Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.51, Read Books Ltd

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• The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Sadness, Reality

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

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• We stumble and fall constantly, even when we are most enlightened.

  Thomas Merton

  Courage, Fall, Enlightened

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.53, Macmillan

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• For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture.

  Thomas Merton

  Power, Men, Guarantees

  Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.213, Macmillan

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• 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

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• The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Moral, Kind

  Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.378, New Directions Publishing

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• Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint...They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems.

  Thomas Merton

  Religious, Writing, Artist

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.98, New Directions Publishing

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• Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.

  Thomas Merton

  Country, Names, Teach

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• Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

  Thomas Merton

  Faith, Wisdom, Path

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.

  Thomas Merton

  Journey, Goes On

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• If we seek paradise outside ourselves, we cannot have paradise in our hearts.

  Thomas Merton

  Being Single, Being Alone, Heart

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.121, Shambhala Publications

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• 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

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• And it is in this darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our own minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.

  Thomas Merton

  Strong, Night, Soul

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• The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

  Thomas Merton

  Positive, Love Is, Law Of Attraction

  Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.

  Thomas Merton

  Home, Sea, Track

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

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• Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.

  Thomas Merton

  Happiness, Ambition, Mindfulness

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

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