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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 7

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

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.

To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything.

Thanksgiving, Gratitude, Grateful

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.48, Macmillan

Love is the door to eternity.

Love, Love Is, Doors

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.134, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It's a risky thing to pray and the danger is that our very prayers get between God and us. The great thing in prayer is not to pray, but to go directly to God. . . . The fact is, though, that if you descend into the depths of your own spirit and arrive somewhere near the center of what you are, you are confronted with the inescapable truth that, at the very root of your existence, you are in constant and immediate contact with the infinite power of God.

Prayer, Roots, Facts

The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

Peace, Ubuntu, Violence

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.207, Shambhala Publications

The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect is also to receive it. So love can only be kept by being given away, and it can only be given perfectly when it is also received.

Positive, Love Is, Law Of Attraction

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.28, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Spiritual, Self, Cherish

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.34, New Directions Publishing

The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.

Spiritual, Attitude, Men

Thomas Merton (1960). “Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.16, Liturgical Press

God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.

Wisdom, May, Sometimes

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.250, Shambhala Publications

The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.

God, Hope, Religious

Thomas Merton (2011). “The Hidden Ground of Love: Letters”, p.434, Macmillan

By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

Music, Reading, Blue

Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.

Our World, Anxiety, World

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.115, New City Press

Each one of us has some kind of vocation. We are all called by God to share in His life and in His Kingdom. Each one of us is called to a special place in the Kingdom. If we find that place we will be happy. If we do not find it, we can never be completely happy. For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.

Destiny, Special, Want

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.138, Shambhala Publications

Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

Art, Artist, Soul

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.36, Shambhala Publications

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.

Peace, War, Fall

The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily.

Wisdom, Father, Men

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.189, Shambhala Publications

When we are strong, we are always much greater than the things that happen to us.

Strength, Strong, Happens

Thomas Merton (2002). “Seeds”

The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God; and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.

Wisdom, Prayer, Inspired

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.61, Macmillan

Every man becomes the image of the God he adores. He whose worship is directed to a dead thing becomes dead. He who loves corruption rots. He who loves a shadow becomes, himself, a shadow. He who loves things that must perish lives in dread of their perishing.

Men, Shadow, Worship

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.263, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We do not exist for ourselves.

Life, Happiness, Success

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

The importance of detachment from things, the importance of poverty, is that we are supposed to be free from things that we might prefer to people. Wherever things have become more important than people, we are in trouble. That is the crux of the whole matter.

People, Important, Might

Thomas Merton (1989). “Thomas Merton in Alaska: Prelude to the Asian Journal : the Alaskan Conferences, Journals, and Letters”, p.97, New Directions Publishing

I came with the notion of perhaps saying something for monks and to monks of all religions because I am supposed to be a monk. ... My dear brothers, WE ARE ALREADY ONE. BUT WE IMAGINE THAT WE ARE NOT. And what we have to recover is our original unity. What we have to be is what we are

Brother, Unity, Imagine

The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

Silence, Solitude, Speech

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

We too often forget that faith is a matter of questioning and struggle before it becomes one of certitude and peace. You have to doubt and reject everything else in order to believe firmly in Christ, and after you have begun to believe, your faith itself must be tested and purified. Christianity is not merely a set of forgone conclusions. Faith tends to be defeated by the burning presence of God in mystery, and seeks refuge from him, flying to comfortable social forms and safe convictions in which purification is no longer an inner battle but a matter of outward gesture.

Faith, Believe, Struggle

To some men peace merely means the liberty to exploit other people without fear of retaliation or interference. To others peace means the freedom to rob others without interruption. To still others it means the leisure to devour the goods of the earth without being compelled to interrupt their pleasures to feed those whom their greed is starving. And to practically everybody peace simply means the absence of any physical violence that might cast a shadow over lives devoted to the satisfaction of their animal appetites for comfort and pleasure.

Mean, Men, Animal

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.122, New Directions Publishing

Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.

Wisdom, Light, Gods Will

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.30, Shambhala Publications

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