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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 22

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Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You

Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?

Wisdom, Thinking, Always Trying

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

Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.

Spiritual, Saint, Sanctity

Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

First, the desert is the country of madness. Second, it is the refuge of the devil, thrown out into the "wilderness of upper Egypt" to "wander in dry places." Thirst drives man mad, and the devil himself is mad with a kind of thirst for his own lost excellence--lost because he has immured himself in it and closed out everything else. So the man who wanders into the desert to be himself must take care that he does not go mad and become the servant of the one who dwells there in a sterile paradise of emptiness and rage.

Country, Men, Egypt

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.21, Macmillan

The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.

Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Wisdom, Light, Darkness

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular.

Self, Firsts, Superficial

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.7, New Directions Publishing

Because of their enmity you will be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you.

Enmity, Left Alone, Casts

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.53, New City Press

When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago.

Discovery, Years, Found

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

Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do.

Happiness, Thinking, Ideas

Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

Wisdom, Hate, Mean

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In the natural order no matter what ideals may be theoretically possible, most people more or less live for themselves and for their own interests and pleasures or for those of their own family or group, and therefore they are constantly interfering with one another's aims, and hurting one another and injuring one another, whether they mean it or not.

Hurt, Mean, Order

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.140, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Spiritual, Society, Degradation

I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may meanI myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

Wisdom, Book, Self

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

The art of our time, sacred art included, will necessarily be characterized by a certain poverty, grimness and roughness which correspond to the violent realities of a cruel age.

Art, Reality, Age

The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

Christian, Men, Light

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.144, New Directions Publishing

Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.

Best Love, Love Is, Perfect

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.139, Shambhala Publications

There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork.

Fighting, Violence, Form

Thomas Merton (2009). “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander”, p.81, Image

To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls.

Real, Being Single, Being Alone

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.3, Shambhala Publications

I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

Wisdom, Stupid, Silly

The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.

Order, Complacency, Vices

Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.

Mercy Of God, Needs, Ashes

Thomas Merton (1976). “Meditations on liturgy”

Pardon all runners, All speechless, alien winds, All mad waters. Pardon their impulses, Their wild attitudes, Their young flights, their reticence. When a message has no clothes on How can it be spoken.

Attitude, Wind, Clothes

Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.351, New Directions Publishing

No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning.

Life, Men, Long

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.11, Shambhala Publications

Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself.

Reality, Light, Views

Whose silence are you?

Wisdom, Silence

Thomas Merton, Lynn Szabo (2005). “In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.90, New Directions Publishing

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