Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 5

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• The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.

  Thomas Merton

  Mean, Men, Technology

  Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

  31 Copy quote

• We are already ONE. We just think we are separate.

  Thomas Merton

  Thinking

  23 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

  Thomas Merton

  Sweet, Heart, Men

  Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

  79 Copy quote

• 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

  52 Copy quote

• 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

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  48 Copy quote

• There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.

  Thomas Merton

  Christmas, Shepherds, Jerusalem

  "Evangelical Sunday School Lesson Commentary 2013-2014". Book by Lance Colkmire, p. 164, January 5, 2012.

  47 Copy quote

• 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

  30 Copy quote

• We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

  Thomas Merton

  Greatness, Achieve, Interest

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.128, Shambhala Publications

  34 Copy quote

• And 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.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Communication, Levels

  "The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters".

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Worry

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.13, Shambhala Publications

  17 Copy quote

• Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Valentines Day, Care

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.3, Shambhala Publications

  18 Copy quote

• There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, "natura naturans." There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.

  Thomas Merton

  Mother, Nature, Integrity

  64 Copy quote

• I am against war, against violence, against violent revolution, for peaceful settlement of differences, for nonviolent but nevertheless radical changes. Change is needed, and violence will not really change anything: at most it will only transfer power from one set of bull-headed authorities to another.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, War, Differences

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  28 Copy quote

• Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

  Thomas Merton

  Art, Artist, Soul

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  54 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Humility is the surest sign of strength.

  Thomas Merton

  Humility

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.190, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.

  Thomas Merton

  Real, Thinking, Self

  "Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for: Selected Spiritual Writings".

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• 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

  56 Copy quote

• If we wait for some people to become agreeable or attractive before we begin to love them, we will never begin. If we are content to give them a cold impersonal 'charity' that is merely a matter of obligation, we will not trouble to understand them or to sympathize with them at all. And in that case we will not really love them, because love implies an efficacious will not only to do good to others exteriorly but also to find some good in them to which we can respond."

  Thomas Merton

  People, Giving, Waiting

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.179, Shambhala Publications

  29 Copy quote

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