Thomas Merton Quotes about Imagination

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When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent,

When your tongue is silent, you can rest in the silence of the forest. When your imagination is silent, the forest speaks to you. It tells you of its unreality and of the Reality of God. But when your mind is silent, then the forest suddenly becomes magnificently real and blazes transparently with the Reality of God.

Thomas Merton

Real, Imagination, Silence

Thomas Merton (1979). “The Sign of Jonas”, Mariner Books

He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.

Thomas Merton

Imagination, Trust In God, Possession

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.13, Shambhala Publications

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

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing.

Thomas Merton

Lying, Imagination, Silence

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.131, New Directions Publishing

We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope. For when our hope is pure, it no longer trusts exclusively in human and visible means, nor rests in any visible end. He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond imagination.

Thomas Merton

Mean, Imagination, Trust In God

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.13, Shambhala Publications