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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 23

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

Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.

Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.

Fire, Victory, Wheels

Thomas Merton (1997). “Dancing In The Water Of Life Volume 5:1963-1965: Seeking Peace in the Hermitage”, HarperOne

A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions, is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of "choice" when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.

Freedom, Choices, Tasks

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

But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.

Mistake, Ambition, Together

There is a subtle but inescapable connection between the "sacred" attitude and the acceptance of one's in most self.

Attitude, Acceptance, Self

In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.

Love, Spiritual, Hate

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.47, Macmillan

Love winter when the plant says nothing.

Winter, Plant, Winter Love

Thomas Merton (1980). “The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.353, New Directions Publishing

For pride, which is the inordinate attribution of goods and values and glories to one's own contingent self, cannot exist where there is no contingent self to which anything can be attributed.

Pride, Self, Glory

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. It is dry and cool and the land is wild with red and gold and crimson, and all the lassitudes of August have seeped out of your blood, and you are full of ambition. It is a wonderful time to begin anything at all.

Ambition, August, Blood

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.190, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope. . . there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk.

Acceptance, People, Risk

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.6, Sounds True

To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.

Wisdom, Men, Order

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.92, Shambhala Publications

See, see Who God is, see the glory of God, going up to Him out of this incomprehensible and infinite Sacrifice in which all history begins and ends, all individual lives begin and end, in which every story is told, and finished, and settled for joy or for sorrow: the one point of reference for all the truths that are outside of God, their center, their focus: Love.

Wisdom, Sacrifice, Focus

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.380, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.

Wisdom, Jesus, Able

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

I refuse to be misled by any kind of a mirage about any alleged success of what I write. Those things are too easily exaggerated, and even when they are true, they always mean less than they seem to.

Success, Writing, Mean

Thomas Merton (1996). “Entering the Silence: Becoming a Monk & Writer”, Harper San Francisco

A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.

Sense Of Humor, Gentle, Theologian

Thomas Merton (1960). “Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.40, Liturgical Press

In general, it can be said that no contemplative life is possible without ascetic self-discipline. One must learn to survive without the habit-forming luxuries which get such a hold on men today. I do not say that to be a contemplative one absolutely has to go without smoking or without alcohol, but certainly one must be able to use these things without being dominated by an uncontrolled need for them.

Men, Contemplative Life, Self

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.86, New Directions Publishing

My own personal task is not simply that of poet and writer (still less commentator, pseudo-prophet); it is basically to praise God out of an inner center of silence, gratitude, and 'awareness.' This can be realized in a life that apparently accomplishes nothing. Without centering on accomplishment or nonaccomplishment, my task is simply the breathing of this gratitude from day to day, in simplicity, and for the rest turning my hand to whatever comes, work being part of praise, whether splitting logs or writing poems, or best of all simple notes.

Gratitude, Writing, Simple

Either you look at the universe as a very poor creation out of which no one can make anything, or you look at your own life and your own part in the universe as infinitely rich, full of inexhaustible interest, opening out into the infinite further responsibilities for study and contemplation and interest and praise. Beyond all and in all is God.

Looks, Study, Infinite

"Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation".

Every other man is a piece of myself, for I am a part and a member of mankind.

Men, Pieces, Members

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.23, Shambhala Publications

It might be good to open our eyes and see.

Eye, Vision, Might

Thomas Merton (2010). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.92, New Directions Publishing

It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as "new men" regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will.

Wisdom, Son, Men

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.

Wisdom, Awful, Lasts

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.14, New Directions Publishing

You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

Wisdom, New York, Feet

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.

Children, Character, Reality

And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.

Wisdom, College, Hands

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.

People, Kind, Felt

Thomas Merton (1989). “Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters”, p.73, New Directions Publishing

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