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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 10

All Quotes Acceptance Acting Age Ambition Anxiety Art Attitude Awakening Awareness Being Alone Being Single Being Yourself Belief Charity Children Choices Christ Christianity Church College Communication Compassion Consciousness Contemplation Country Courage Creation Darkness Desire Destiny Devil Discipline Doubt Earth Effort Eternity Evil Exercise Failing Faith Freedom Giving Glory God Grace Gratitude Happiness Hate Hatred Heart Heaven Hell Home Humanity Humility Identity Imagination Individuality Inspiration Inspirational Integrity Intuition Jesus Journey Joy Justice Language Liberty Life Logic Loneliness Love Lying Meditation Mercy Mindfulness Moon Overcoming Passion Peace Perfection Poverty Praise Prayer Pride Purpose Rain Reality Reflection Responsibility Risk Sacrifice Silence Simplicity Sin Solitude Sorrow Soul Spirituality Spring Study Suffering Teaching Temptation Today Truth Unconditional Love Understanding Unity Values Violence Vision Waiting War Wisdom Work Out Worry Worship Writing

Take more time, cover less ground.

Take more time, cover less ground.

Patience, Focus, Mindfulness

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.

Religious, Writing, Artist

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

Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

Love, Wisdom, Prayer

"New Seeds of Contemplation".

Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains.

Spiritual, Art, Order

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

Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.

Teaching, Unique, Doors

John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.21, World Wisdom, Inc

When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.

Prayer, Silence, World

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.106, Macmillan

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!

Wisdom, Prayer, Beginners

"Contemplative Prayer".

Let me rest in Your will and be silent. Then the light of Your joy will warm my life. Its fire will burn in my heart and shine for Your glory. This is what I live for. Amen, amen.

Heart, Fire, Light

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.89, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.

Wisdom, Mean, Self

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life.

Law, Infinite, Inner Life

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

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

Wisdom, Truth, Errors

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.246, Shambhala Publications

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying Him.... The more a tree is like itself, the more it is like Him.

Mean, Giving, Tree

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.29, New Directions Publishing

We cannot possess the truth fully until it has entered into the very substance of our life by good habits, and by a certain perfection of moral activity.

Perfection, Substance, Moral

Contemplation is the loving sense of this life, this presence and this eternity.

Eternity, Contemplation, This Life

Thomas Merton (1997). “Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage”, HarperOne

This act of total surrender is not merely a fantastic intellectual and mystical gamble; it is something much more serious. It is an act of love for this unseen person, who, in the very gift of love by which we surrender ourselves to his reality also makes his presence known to us.

Wisdom, Reality, Intellectual

Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.

Wisdom, Athlete, Soul

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who He is, and who we are.

Keys, Understanding, Enemy

Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.216, Macmillan

A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth.

Christian, Powerful, Earth

Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.105, Macmillan

The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary every day routine.

Ordinary, Routine, Way

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.47, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.

Reality, Mirrors, Light

Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

Motivational, Men, Order

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

Mistake, Destiny, Race

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.154, Image

Ash Wednesday is full of joy...The source of all sorrow is the illusion that of ourselves we are anything but dust.

Dust, Joy, Sorrow

I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Angel, Faces, Peril

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.85, Sounds True

Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

Relationship, Brother, Silence

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.280, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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