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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 12

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

I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most

I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.

Kindness, Real, Thinking

The friends of Job appear on the scene as advisers and "consolers," offering Job the fruits of their moral scientia. But when Job insists that his sufferings have no explanation and that he cannot discover the reason for them through conventional ethical concepts, his friends turn into accusers, and curse Job as a sinner. Thus, instead of consolers, they become torturers by virtue of their very morality, and in so doing, while claiming to be advocates of God, they act as instruments of the devil.

Jobs, Offering, Suffering

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.

Christian, Religious, Mean

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

Love not only prefers the good of another to my own, but it does not even compare the two.

Two, Doe, Compare

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.2, Shambhala Publications

God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.

Wisdom, Heart, Expression

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.220, Shambhala Publications

But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.

Wisdom, Thinking, Hair

"My Argument with the Gestapo: Autobiographical novel".

The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.176, Shambhala Publications

The great thing, and the only thing, is to adore and praise GOD.

Praise, Praise God, Adore

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

To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

Self, Worship, Hell

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.26, New Directions Publishing

Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

Love Is, Poverty, Epiphany

Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.254, Macmillan

Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.

Spiritual, Love Is, Men

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.124, New Directions Publishing

....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

Wisdom, Jesus, Essence

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.82, Shambhala Publications

By my monastic life and vows I am saying no to all the concentration camps, the aerial bombardments, the staged political trials, the judicial murders, the racial injustices, the economic tyrannies, and the whole socioeconomic apparatus which seems geared for nothing but global destruction in spite of all its fair words in favor of peace.

Political, Trials, Favors

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.134, Sounds True

Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked.

Spiritual, Anxiety, Insecurity

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

Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.

Awareness, Insight

Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.17, Macmillan

Life is not accomplishing some special work but attaining to a degree of consciousness and inner freedom which is beyond all works and attainments.

Spiritual, Special, Degrees

Thomas Merton (1993). “The Courage for Truth: Letters to Writers”, p.345, Macmillan

The Christian life, and especially the contemplative life, is a continual discovery of Christ in new and unexpected places.

Christian, Contemplative Life, Discovery

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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.

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

As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate.

Pain, Hate, Love Is

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.72, New Directions Publishing

There should be at least a room or some corner where no one will find you and disturb you or notice you.

Rooms, Should, Corners

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way.

Keys, Finals, Answers

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.130, New Directions Publishing

Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.

Spiritual, Wisdom, Men

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

The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.

Simple, Reality, Silence

When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.

Wisdom, Needs, World

The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.

Wisdom, Dream, Mean

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