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Thomas Merton Quotes - Page 9

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

As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.

As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless He shows himself to me, I will have Peace, and He will be near me and in me, and I will rest in Him.

Long, Shows, Knows

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.112, Macmillan

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.

Compassion, Ideas, Purpose

The root of war is fear.

War, Roots

Thomas Merton (1995). “Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis”, p.50, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

One of the strange laws of the contemplative life is that in it you do not sit down and solve problems: you bear with them until they somehow solve themselves. Or until life solves them for you.

Contemplative Life, Law, Down And

Thomas Merton, Robert Inchausti (2007). “Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing”, p.23, Shambhala Publications

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect on me is to live on the doorstep of hell. Selfishness is doomed to frustration centered as it is upon a lie. To live exclusively for myself, I must make all things bend themselves to my will as if I were a god.

Spiritual, Lying, Frustration

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.24, Shambhala Publications

Prayer is an expression of who we are...We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.

Prayer, Expression, Who We Are

The biggest human temptation is... to settle for too little.

Wisdom, Temptation, Simple Life

Forbes, August 4, 1980.

In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

Responsibility, Self Improvement, Analysis

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

But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.

Men, Mercy Of God, May

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.228, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

Courage, Listening, Quiet

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.191, University of Notre Dame Pess

In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart.

Humility, Heart, Thinking

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.57, New Directions Publishing

Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all others.

Protect, Expenses

Thomas Merton (2010). “The Nonviolent Alternative”, p.213, Macmillan

We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.

Love, Selfish, Loving Others

Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin. Grace is unity, oneness within ourselves, oneness with God.

Spiritual, Oneness, Grace

Thomas Merton (2003). “The New Man”, p.29, Bloomsbury Publishing

Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at all. It is active and purposeful collaboration in evil that brings the Christian into direct and intimate contact with the same source of evil and hatred which inspires the acts of his enemy. It leads in practice to a denial of Christ and to the service of hatred rather than love.

Christian, Wisdom, Hate

The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.

Love Is, Men, Way

Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

Peace, Solitude, Looks

Thomas Merton (2012). “On Christian Contemplation”, p.36, New Directions Publishing

The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.

Wisdom, Passion, Light

Thomas Merton (2009). “A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960”, p.39, Harper Collins

In an age where there is much talk about "being yourself," I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.

Being Yourself, Age, Littles

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

The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen. suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there. It might be good to open our eyes and see.

Eye, May, Might

"Zen and the Birds of Appetite".

Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.

Thinking, Grace, Unconscious

Modern man believes he is fruitful and productive when his ego is aggressively affirmed, when he is visibly active, and when his action produces obvious results.

Believe, Men, Ego

Thomas Merton (1979). “Love and Living”, p.27, Macmillan

The Hindus are not looking for us to send them men who will build schools and hospitals, although those things are good and useful in themselves--and perhaps very badly needed in India: they want to know if we have any saints to send them.

Wisdom, School, Men

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.240, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I can depend less and less on my own power and sense of direction...It is so strange to advance backwards and get where you are going in a totally unexpected way

Way, Unexpected, Strange

And that is why the man who wants to see clearly, before he will believe, never starts on the journey.

Believe, Journey, Men

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