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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 16

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

My God, I pray better to you by breathing and walking than by talking, just as in choir I sing best when I am thinking about something else, or better still, praying.

My God, I pray better to you by breathing and walking than by talking, just as in choir I sing best when I am thinking about something else, or better still, praying.

Talking, Breathing, Praying

"Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk & Writer".

The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.

Wisdom, Lonely, Loneliness

The artistic experience, at its highest, was actually a natural analogue of mystical experience. It produced a kind of intuitive of perception.

Mystical Experiences, Perception, Artistic

Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

I suppose what makes me most glad is that we all recognize each other in this metaphysical space of silence and happening, and get some sense, for a moment, that we are full of paradise without knowing it.

Knowing, Space, Silence

What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.

Pants, Praying, Breathe

"Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings".

True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.

Wisdom, May, Rewards

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.56, Shambhala Publications

Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.

Humility, Errors, Sincerity

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.

Hate, Mercy Of God, Silence

Thomas Merton (1976). “The Power and Meaning of Love”

Love is an intensification of life.

Love Is

It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.

Creating, Tasks, Mindfulness

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.202, Macmillan

Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.

Christian, Wisdom, Greatness

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.128, Shambhala Publications

The humble person receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass.

Humble, Glasses, Light

Thomas Merton (1972). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.189, New Directions Publishing

For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?

Heart, Giving, Doe

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.28, Shambhala Publications

I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part of my life of prayer.

Prayer, Weather, Climate

Thomas Merton, Victor A. Kramer (1996). “Turning toward the world: the pivotal years”, Harper San Francisco

People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.

Wisdom, Ideas, People

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.281, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.

Effort, Important, Able

Thomas Merton (1974). “A Thomas Merton Reader”, Image

True happiness is found in unselfish Love, A love which increases in proportion as it is shared.

Happiness And Love, Unselfish Love, True Happiness

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

Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God

Spiritual, Wisdom, Sacrifice

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.160, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to people not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of humans led them further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.

Nature, Rain, Moon

The camera does not know what it takes; it captures materials with which you reconstruct, not so much what you saw as what you thought you saw. Hence the best photography is aware, mindful, of illusion and uses illusion, permitting and encouraging it - especially unconscious and powerful illusions that are not usually admitted on the scene.

Photography, Powerful, Cameras

Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.153, New Directions Publishing

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

Way, Mercy, Contradiction

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.148, Sounds True

Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.

Home, Mean, Offering

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.6, Macmillan

True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques.

Spiritual, Clever, Grace

Thomas Merton (2009). “Contemplative Prayer”, p.70, Image

Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said. Our interior world must be more than an echo of the words of someone else. There is no point in being a moon to somebody else's sun, still less is there any justification for our being moons of one another, and hence darkness to one another, not one of us being a true sun.

Wisdom, Moon, Echoes

Our happiness consists in sharing the happiness of God, the perfection of His unlimited freedom, the perfection of His love.

Perfection, His Love, Unlimited

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.434, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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