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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 13

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Once you have grace, I said to him, you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you

Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.

Wisdom, Long, Forever

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.462, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

Peace, War, Sacrifice

Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.35, Macmillan

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Love, Inspirational, Family

"No Man is an Island".

We do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.

Order, Answers, May

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.119, Macmillan

We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.

Meditation

Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon (2010). “Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation”, p.52, Bloomsbury Publishing

a man can radically change his life and attain to a deeper meaning, a more perfect integration, a more complete fulfillment, a more total liberty of spirit than are possible in the routines of a purely active existence centered on money-making.

Change, Money, Men

Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.8, Macmillan

The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent.

Wisdom, Self, Jewels

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.38, New Directions Publishing

The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.

Men, Evil, Guilt

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless, than one that always verges on despair.

Despair, May, Hopeless

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

When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.

Wisdom, Hate, Men

Love is its own reward.

Love You, Unconditional Love, Love Is

Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.

Thinking, Discovery, Years

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Stop thinking and start looking.

Thinking

John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.18, World Wisdom, Inc

Those who think they 'know' from the beginning will never in fact come to know anything.

Thinking, Facts, Knows

Thomas Merton (2009). “Contemplative Prayer”, p.13, Image

God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend. We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves, substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction.

Faith, Inspiration, Self

Thomas Merton, Ernesto Cardenal (2017). “From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal”, p.312, Counterpoint Press

God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.

Voice, Able, Spirituality

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

If you have love you will do all things well.

Love, Inspirational, Wells

To hope is to risk frustration. Make up your mind to risk frustration.

Frustration, Risk, Mind

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

One has to be alone, under the sky, Before everything falls into place and one finds his or her own place in the midst of it all. We have to have the humility to realize ourselves as part of nature.

Fall, Humility, Sky

To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.

Men, Opposites, Proud

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.50, Macmillan

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

Risk

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

Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.

Wisdom, Destiny, Work Out

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.10, New Directions Publishing

Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them.

Crow, Mind, Glitter

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

Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair. Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone.

Christian, Spiritual, Sunshine

Thomas Merton (2003). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.190, Shambhala Publications

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.

Heart, Meditation, Doubt

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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