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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 15

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None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not

None of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God — acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him.

Wisdom, Prayer, Pride

"The seven storey mountain".

If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.

Wisdom, Decision, Useless

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.105, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.

Reality, Destiny, Men

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.31, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Things that are good are good, and if one is responding to that goodness one is in contact with a truth from which one is getting something. The truth is doing us good. The truth of the sunshine, the truth of the rain, the truth of the fresh air, the truth of the wind in the trees, these are truths. And they are always accessible!

Rain, Sunshine, Air

"Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected".

Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.

Humility, Illusion, Withdrawing

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.73, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but in realizing the fact that there is no such existence from the first.

Spiritual, Powerful, Block

Thomas Merton (1968). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.109, New Directions Publishing

Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.

Meditation, Decision, Matter

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.105, Macmillan

Our knowledge of God is perfected by gratiitude: we are thankful and rejoice in the experience of the truth that He is love.

Thanksgiving, Knowledge Of God, Rejoice

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.46, Macmillan

The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

Fire, Feet, World

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.228, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive, and suicidal neglect of our own being.

Suicidal, Evil, World

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.222, Image

If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

Wisdom, Heart, Carpe Diem

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.30, Macmillan

... but any fool knows that you don't need money to get enjoyment out of life.

Life, Needs, Fool

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.29, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

You cannot be a man of faith unless you know how to doubt.

Men, Doubt, Know How

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.105, New Directions Publishing

Even the darkest moments of the liturgy are filled with joy, and Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the lenten fast, is a day of happiness, a Christian feast.

Christian, Joy, Ashes

Thomas Merton (2010). “Seasons of Celebration”, p.100, Macmillan

If we live with possibilities we are exiles from the present which is given us by God to be our own, homeless and displaced in a future or a past which are not ours because they are always beyond our reach. The present is our right place, and we can lay hands on whatever it offers us.

Wisdom, Past, Hands

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.231, Shambhala Publications

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?

Prayer, Use, Answers

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.39, Macmillan

The fruitfulness of our lives depends in large measure in our ability to doubt our own words and to question the value of our own work. The man who completely trusts his own estimate of himself is doomed to sterility.

Wisdom, Men, Doubt

Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

Mean, Exercise, Light

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.213, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived!

Wisdom, Light, Dwelling

For me to be a saint means to be myself.

Mean, Saint

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

It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not what he ought to be. If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we do away with him altogether.

Hate, Men, Suffering

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.142, Image

It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God.

Christian, Spiritual, Ordinary

Thomas Merton (1963). “Life and Holiness”, [New York] : Herder and Herder

The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the fullness of human living. Man cannot be happy for long unless he is in contact with the springs of spiritual life which are hidden in the depths of his own soul. If man is exiled constantly from his own home, locked out of his spiritual solitude, he ceases to be a true person.

Happy, Spiritual, Peace

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees.

Spiritual, Writing, Wind

Thomas Merton (2015). “Charter, Customs, and Constitutions of the Cistercians: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 7”, p.10, Liturgical Press

Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.

Giving, Perspective, Silence

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.49, Macmillan

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