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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 3

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

In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.

In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.

Important, Devil, Theology

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.96, New Directions Publishing

I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.

Home, Sea, Track

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

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your piece of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist.

Heart, Humility, Thinking

Fear narrows the little entrance of our heart. It shrinks up our capacity to love. It freezes up our power to give ourselves.

Heart, Capacity To Love, Giving

Thomas Merton (2010). “Seasons of Celebration”, p.103, Macmillan

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

Wisdom, Men, Risk

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.

Love Is, Making Love, Getting What You Want

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.40, Macmillan

What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.

Mean, Giving, Firsts

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.

God, Spiritual, Truth

Thomas Merton (2012). “On Christian Contemplation”, p.41, New Directions Publishing

True encounter with Christ liberates something in us, a power we did not know we had, a hope, a capacity for life, a resilience, an ability to bounce back when we thought we were completely defeated, a capacity to grow and change, a power of creative transformation.

Spiritual, Encounters, Christ

"He is risen".

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

Art, Fools Day, Finding Yourself

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.35, Shambhala Publications

In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work with expecting immediate reward, to love without an instant satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition. It is only when we are detached from ourselves that we can be at peace with ourselves.

Order, Special, Rewards

Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him...who loves us, who is near to us.

Prayer, Way

Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.

Real, Heart, Journey

Thomas Merton (1975). “The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton”, p.296, New Directions Publishing

Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of content and become mere illusions.

Love, Spiritual, Exercise

"The Wisdom of the Desert".

Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.

Selfish, Believe, Men

It is my belief, that we should not be too sure of having found Christ in ourselves until we have found him also in that part of humanity that is most remote from our own.

Humanity, Belief, Awareness

Weaknesses and deficiencies . . . play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.

Play, Important, Weakness

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.22, Shambhala Publications

The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility.

Sweet, Heart, Men

Thomas Merton (1962). “Seeds of contemplation”

And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond speech, and it is beyond concept.

Wisdom, Communication, Levels

"The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters".

The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.

Wisdom, Hurt, Insignificant Things

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.116, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No one is so wrong as the man who knows all the answers.

Men, Answers, He Man

Thomas Merton (2012). “On Eastern Meditation”, p.16, New Directions Publishing

Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

Wisdom, Violence, Cease

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.129, Macmillan

A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.

Life, Wisdom, Men

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.99, Macmillan

The meaning of life is found in openness to being and "being present" in full awareness.

Life, Awareness, Found

Thomas Merton (2010). “Zen and the Birds of Appetite”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.

Names, Numbers, Giving

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.12, Shambhala Publications

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