Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 7

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• We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners, all our life!

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Prayer, Beginners

  "Contemplative Prayer".

  10 Copy quote

• Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Oneness, Grace

  Thomas Merton (2003). “The New Man”, p.29, Bloomsbury Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.

  Thomas Merton

  Religious, Silence, And Love

  Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.56, Shambhala Publications

  13 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 peace of heart.

  Thomas Merton

  Humility, Heart, Thinking

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

  11 Copy quote

• Do not be one of those who, rather than risk failure, never attempts anything.

  Thomas Merton

  Risk

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.104, New Directions Publishing

  12 Copy quote

• Take more time, cover less ground.

  Thomas Merton

  Patience, Focus, Mindfulness

  8 Copy quote

• He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.

  Thomas Merton

  Imagination, Trust In God, Possession

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

  15 Copy quote

• Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Self, Cherish

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

  31 Copy quote

• A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

  Thomas Merton

  Life, Wisdom, Men

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.99, Macmillan

  28 Copy quote

• To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Peace, Demand

  10 Copy quote

• By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

  Thomas Merton

  Music, Reading, Blue

  18 Copy quote

• The grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.

  Thomas Merton

  Gratitude, Grateful, Differences

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.48, Macmillan

  33 Copy quote

• Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

  Thomas Merton

  Peace, Solitude, Looks

  Thomas Merton (2012). “On Christian Contemplation”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been (too easily) convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done 'for the common good.'...one might point to the way in which racial hatreds and even persecution are admitted by people who consider themselves, and perhaps in some sense are, kind, tolerant, civilized and even humane.

  Thomas Merton

  Names, People, Evil

  14 Copy quote

• A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.

  Thomas Merton

  Happiness, Enough, Bigs

  Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.1, Shambhala Publications

  35 Copy quote

• I believe we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the difficult and patient task of outgrowing rigid and intransigent nationalism, and work slowly towards a world federation of peaceful nations. How will this be possible? Don't ask me. I don't know. But unless we develop a moral, spiritual, and political wisdom that is proportionate to our technological skill, our skill may end us.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Wisdom, Peace

  Thomas Merton (1995). “Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis”, p.102, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

  20 Copy quote

• Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.

  Thomas Merton

  Order, World, May

  Thomas Merton (2010). “Seasons of Celebration”, p.98, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.

  Thomas Merton

  Christian, Religious, Mean

  Thomas Merton (1975). “He is risen”, Tabor Pub

  25 Copy quote

• Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

  Thomas Merton

  Our World, Anxiety, World

  Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.115, New City Press

  9 Copy quote

• To be a saint is to be yourself.

  Thomas Merton

  Being Yourself, Saint

  6 Copy quote

• Love is the door to eternity.

  Thomas Merton

  Love, Love Is, Doors

  Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.134, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

  Thomas Merton

  Self Esteem, People, Shining

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.155, Image

  20 Copy quote

• The things we really need come to us only as gifts, and in order to receive them as gifts we have to be open. In order to be open we have to renounce ourselves, in a sense we have to die to our image of ourselves, our autonomy, our fixation upon our self-willed identity.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Order, Identity

  Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.224, Image

  21 Copy quote

• The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Prayer, Inspired

  Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.61, Macmillan

  23 Copy quote

• There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God. If I find Him I will find myself and if I find my true self I will find Him.

  Thomas Merton

  Self, Problem, Existence

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

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