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Thomas Merton Quotes about Wisdom - Page 4

All Thomas Merton 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 quotes Work Out Worry Worship Writing

Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience

Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God

Spiritual, Wisdom, Sacrifice

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.160, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said. Our interior world must be more than an echo of the words of someone else. There is no point in being a moon to somebody else's sun, still less is there any justification for our being moons of one another, and hence darkness to one another, not one of us being a true sun.

Wisdom, Moon, Echoes

Day after day I read Freud, thinking myself to be very enlightened and scientific when, as a matter of fact, I was about as scientific as an old woman secretly poring over books about occultism, trying to tell her own fortune, and learning how to dope out the future form the lines in the palm of her hand. I don't know if I ever got very close to needing a padded cell: but if I ever had gone crazy, I think psychoanalysis would have been the one thing chiefly responsible for it.

Wisdom, Crazy, Book

There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.

Wisdom, Contemplative Life, Temptation

Thomas Merton (1998). “Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected”, p.176, University of Notre Dame Pess

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his "right mind." p. 31

Wisdom, Peace, Men

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.31, New Directions Publishing

For now, oh my God, it is to You alone that I can talk, because nobody else will understand. I cannot bring any other man on this earth into the cloud where I dwell in Your light, that is, Your darkness, where I am lost and abashed. I cannot explain to any other man the anguish which is Your joy nor the loss which is the Possession of You, nor the distance from all things which is the arrival in You, nor the death which is the birth in You because I do not know anything about it myself and all I know is that I wish it were over - I wish it were begun.

Wisdom, Distance, Loss

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

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.

Wisdom, Artist, Saint

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.98, New Directions Publishing

The whole function of the life of prayer is, then, to enlighten and strengthen our conscience so that it not only knows and perceives the outward, written precepts of the moral and divine laws, but above all lives God's law in concrete reality by perfect and continual union with His will.

Wisdom, Prayer, Reality

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.42, Shambhala Publications

The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both.

Wisdom, Journey, Acting

Thomas Merton (1999). “Mystics and Zen Masters”, p.92, Macmillan

To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.

Wisdom, Acknowledge Him, Evil

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.234, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In all His acts God orders all things, whether good or evil, for the good of those who know Him and seek Him and who strive to bring their own freedom under obedience to His divine purpose. All that is done by the will of God in secret is done for His glory and for the good of those whom He has chosen to share in His glory.

Wisdom, Order, Evil

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.55, Shambhala Publications

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

Death, Wisdom, Heart

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is not merely our own desire but the desire of Christ in His Spirit that drives us to grow in love. Those who seldom or never feel in their hearts the desire for the love of God and other men, and who do not thirst for the pure waters of desire which are poured out in us by the strong, living God, are usually those who have drunk from other rivers or have dug for themselves broken cisterns.

Wisdom, Strong, Heart

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.206, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.

Wisdom, Silence, Solitude

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Sign of Jonas”, p.373, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist....It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.

Wisdom, Responsibility, Unique

Nicki Verploegen Vandergrift, Thomas Merton (1995). “Meditations with Merton”, Triumph Books

I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.

Wisdom, Thorns, Penance

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

The end of the world will be legal.

Wisdom, World, End Of The World

It is by desiring to grow in love that we receive the Holy Spirit, and the thirst for more charity is the effect of this more abundant reception.

Wisdom, Charity, Spirit

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.190, Shambhala Publications

How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand things of which we have no practical knowledge at all.

Wisdom, Book, Thinking

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.249, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him.

Wisdom, Acceptance, Reality

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

The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.

Wisdom, Analysis, Firsts

Thomas Merton (2015). “Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation”, p.8, Sounds True

In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.

Wisdom, Answers, Creation

Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.

Wisdom, Artist, Alchemist

Thomas Merton, Patrick Hart (1985). “The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton”, p.379, New Directions Publishing

For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.

Wisdom, Light, Bird

Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently.

Wisdom, Strong, Real

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