Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. T
  4. Thomas Merton
  5. Art

Thomas Merton Quotes about Art

All Thomas Merton Quotes Acceptance Acting Age Ambition Anxiety Art quotes 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
Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.

Thomas Merton
Life, Country, Art
Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, New Directions Publishing

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

Thomas Merton
Art, Fools Day, Finding Yourself
Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.35, Shambhala Publications

The artist should preach nothing-not even his own autonomy. His art should speak its own truth, and in so doing it will be in harmony with every other kind of truth- moral, metaphysical, mystical.

Thomas Merton
Art, Moral, Kind
Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.378, New Directions Publishing

The true contemplative is one who has discovered the art of finding leisure even in the midst of his work, by working with such a spirit of detachment and recollection that even his work is a prayer

Thomas Merton
Art, Prayer, Leisure
Thomas Merton, (2013). “Thomas Merton - Spiritual Direction and Meditation”, p.51, Read Books Ltd

Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

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

Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains.

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

Each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what He wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by His Love and His infinite Art.

Thomas Merton
Art, Giving, Individuality
Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.30, New Directions Publishing

Imagination has the creative task of making symbols, joining things together in such a way that they throw new light on each other and on everything around them. The imagination is a discovering faculty, a faculty for seeing relationships, for seeing meanings that are special and even quite new.

Thomas Merton
Art, Light, Imagination
Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.178, University of Notre Dame Pess

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.

Thomas Merton
Art, Reality, Age

You May Also Like: