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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 20

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

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.

Spiritual, Depth, Action

One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.

Humility, Acceptance, Sacrifice

We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to.

Gratitude, Giving, Laughing

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.147, Shambhala Publications

Persons are not known by intellect alone, not by principles alone, but only by love. It is when we love the other, the enemy, that we obtain from God the key to an understanding of who he is, and who we are. It is only this realization that can open to us the real nature of our duty, and of right action.

Life, Real, Keys

Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.216, Macmillan

The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's study or a contemplative cell. It is a body of oral messages, announcements, prophecies, promulgations, recitals, histories, songs of praise, lamentations, etc., which are meant either to be uttered or at least read aloud, or chanted, or sung, or recited in a community convoked for the purpose of a living celebration.

Song, Cells, Community

We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.

Wisdom, Acceptance, Reality

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

The imagination should be allowed a certain amount of time to browse around.

Imagination, Should, Certain

The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.

Wisdom, Analysis, Firsts

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.8, Sounds True

Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.

Spiritual, Men, Meditation

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.54, Macmillan

In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.

Wisdom, Answers, Creation

The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.

Reality, Logical, Mediation

John C. H. Wu, Jingxiong Wu, Thomas Merton, Kenneth Kraft (2003). “The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty”, p.4, World Wisdom, Inc

If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.

Spiritual, Want, Life Is

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.64, Macmillan

Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.

Wisdom, Artist, Alchemist

Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.379, New Directions Publishing

Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?

Opposites, Want, Waste

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.132, Shambhala Publications

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.

Joy, Intuition, Levels

"Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation".

The man of faith who has never experienced doubt is not a man of faith.

Men, Doubt, He Man

Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.306, New Directions Publishing

One opens the inner doors of one's heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit, out of whose abysses love wells up without fail and gives itself to all.

Heart, Doors, Giving

To be a saint is to be yourself.

Being Yourself, Saint

What do you want to want to be, anyway?" "I don't know; I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic." "What you should say"--he told me--"what you should say is that you want to be a saint.

Catholic, Saint, Want

We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was lost.

Self, Needs, Firsts

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.248, Shambhala Publications

I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.

Catholic, Gods Will, I Can

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.

Wisdom, Light, Bird

The man who lives in division is living in death. He cannot find himself because he is lost; he has ceased to be a reality. The person he believes himself to be is a bad dream.

Dream, Believe, Men

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.48, New Directions Publishing

If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is "just glass."

Glasses, Color, Consciousness

Thomas Merton, William H. Shannon (2010). “Thomas Merton's Paradise Journey: Writings on Contemplation”, p.222, Bloomsbury Publishing

One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will have to be my wife.

Sweet, Dark, Wife

Thomas Merton (1981). “Day of a stranger”

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