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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 11

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

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice �out there� calling me to be something

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice �out there� calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice �in here� calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God.

Mean, Self, Voice

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

Self Esteem, People, Shining

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

The psychological impotence of our enraged generation must be traced to the overwhelming accusation of insincerity which every man and woman has to confront, in the depths of his own soul, when he seeks to love merely for his own pleasure.And yet the men of our time do not love with enough courage to risk even discomfort or inconvenience.

Men, Soul, Risk

The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out of the heart of that dark warmth comes the secret that is heard only in silence, but it is the root of all the secrets that are whispered by all the lovers in their beds all over the world.

Sweet, Heart, Dark

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

In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.

Wisdom, Reality, Ends

The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.

Wisdom, Men, Light

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

Religious, Silence, And Love

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

The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.

Long, Assuming, Clear

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

I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.

Beautiful, Spiritual, Atmosphere

Thomas Merton (1988). “Encounter: Thomas Merton & D.T. Suzuki”

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost

Wisdom, Self, Order

Thomas Merton (1972). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.180, New Directions Publishing

The goal of fasting is inner unity.

Spiritual, Goal, Unity

Thomas Merton (2004). “The Way of Chuang Tzu”, p.54, Shambhala Publications

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness.

Inspirational, Visible, Wholeness

"In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton".

The only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to all his illusions about the world.

Men, World, Way

Contemplative living is living in true relationship with oneself, God, others and nature, free of the illusions of separateness.

True Relationship, Illusion, Contemplative

Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.

Art, Giving, Individuality

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.30, New Directions Publishing

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Liberty, Causes, Destruction

A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

Love, Book, Evil

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.71, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)

Wisdom, Men, Order

Technology is not in itself opposed to spirituality and to religion. But it presents a great temptation.

Technology, Temptation, Spirituality

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.18, Image

Living is not thinking. Thought is formed and guided by objective reality outside us. Living is the constant adjustment of thought to life and life to thought in such a way that we are always growing, always experiencing new things in the old and old things in the new. Thus life is always new.

Wisdom, Reality, Thinking

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.32, Macmillan

Imagination has the creative task of making symbols, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.

Art, Light, Imagination

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.178, University of Notre Dame Pess

Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or 'fight for.' It is indeed 'fighting for peace' that starts all the wars. What, after all, are the pretexts of all these Cold War crises, but 'fighting for peace?' Peace is something you have or do not have. If you are yourself at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Then share your peace with everyone, and everyone will be at peace.

War, Fighting, World

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

Light, Events, Hell

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

Spiritual, Failure, Fall

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

On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble his case is hopeless.

Spiritual, Humble, Humility

Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

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