Authors:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z

Thomas Merton Quotes about Wisdom - Page 5

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

The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call

The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?

Wisdom, Egypt, Land

Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

The secret of my full identity is hidden in Him. He alone can make me who I am, or rather who I will be when at last I fully begin to be. But unless I desire this identity and work to find it with Him and in Him, the work will never be done

Wisdom, Who I Am, Secret

Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.33, New Directions Publishing

The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.

Wisdom, Evil, Temptation

The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.

Wisdom, Lying, Errors

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.212, Shambhala Publications

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with realities outside and above us.

Spiritual, Wisdom, Reality

Thomas Merton (2011). “Thoughts In Solitude”, p.18, Macmillan

Because You have called me here not to wear a label by which I can recognize myself and place myself in some kind of a category. You do not want me to be thinking about what I am, but about what You are. Or rather, You do not even want me to be thinking about anything much: for You would raise me above the level of thought. And if I am always trying to figure out what I am and where I am and why I am, how will that work be done?

Wisdom, Thinking, Always Trying

Thomas Merton (1998). “The seven storey mountain”, Harcourt

The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God's will and his grace.

Spiritual, Wisdom, Grace

For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness

Wisdom, Light, Darkness

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.211, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.

Wisdom, Hate, Mean

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.152, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may meanI myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written in this book. And this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in both.

Wisdom, Book, Self

Thomas Merton (2015). “Charter, Customs, and Constitutions of the Cistercians: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 7”, p.10, Liturgical Press

I had refused to pay any attention to the moral laws upon which all our vitality and sanity depend: and so now I was reduced to the condition of a silly old woman, worrying about a lot of imaginary rules of health, standards of food-value, and a thousand minute details of conduct that were in themselves completely ridiculous and stupid, and yet which haunted me with vague and terrific sanctions. If I eat this, I may go out of my mind. If I do not eat that, I may die in the night.

Wisdom, Stupid, Silly

Whose silence are you?

Wisdom, Silence

Thomas Merton, Lynn Szabo (2005). “In the Dark Before Dawn: New Selected Poems of Thomas Merton”, p.90, New Directions Publishing

To know the Cross is not merely to know our own sufferings. For the Cross is the sign of salvation, and no man is saved by his own sufferings. To know the Cross is to know that we are saved by the sufferings of Christ; more, it is to know the love of Christ Who underwent suffering and death in order to save us. It is, then, to know Christ.

Wisdom, Men, Order

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.92, Shambhala Publications

See, see Who God is, see the glory of God, going up to Him out of this incomprehensible and infinite Sacrifice in which all history begins and ends, all individual lives begin and end, in which every story is told, and finished, and settled for joy or for sorrow: the one point of reference for all the truths that are outside of God, their center, their focus: Love.

Wisdom, Sacrifice, Focus

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.380, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

It is by the Holy Spirit that we love those who are united to us in Christ. The more plentifully we have received of the Spirit of Christ, the more perfectly we are able to love them: and the more we love them the more we receive the Spirit. It is clear, however, that since we love them by the Spirit Who is given to us by Jesus, it is Jesus Himself Who loves them in us.

Wisdom, Jesus, Able

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.187, Shambhala Publications

It is the will of God that we live not only as rational beings, but as "new men" regenerated by the Holy Spirit in Christ. It is His will that we reach out for our inheritance, that we answer His call to be His sons. We are born men without our consent, but the consent to be sons of God has to be elicited by our own free will.

Wisdom, Son, Men

Thomas Merton (2005). “No Man is an Island”, p.60, Shambhala Publications

The most awful tyranny is that of the proximate Utopia where the last sins are currently being eliminated and where, tomorrow, there will be no more sins because all the sinners will have been wiped out.

Wisdom, Awful, Lasts

Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Merton (1965). “Gandhi on Non-violence”, p.14, New Directions Publishing

You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude." And You have turned around and thrown the world in my lap. You have told me, "Leave all things and follow me," and then You have tied half of New York to my foot like a ball and chain. You have got me kneeling behind that pillar with my mind making a noise like a bank. Is that contemplation?

Wisdom, New York, Feet

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.484, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.

Wisdom, College, Hands

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.81, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In any case, his religious teaching consisted mostly in more or less vague ethical remarks, an obscure mixture of ideals of English gentlemanliness and his favorite notions of personal hygiene. Everybody knew that his class was liable to degenerate into a demonstration of some practical points about rowing, with Buggy sitting on the table and showing us how to pull an oar.

Wisdom, Religious, Teaching

Thomas Merton (1998). “The Seven Storey Mountain”, p.106, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The lights of prayer that make us imagine we are beginning to be angels are sometimes only signs that we are finally beginning to be men. We do not have a high enough opinion of our own nature. We think we are at the gates of heaven and we are only just beginning to come into our own realm as free and intelligent beings.

Wisdom, Prayer, Angel

Thomas Merton (2002). “The Ascent to Truth”, p.209, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

His justice is the love that gives to each one of His creatures the gifts that His mercy has previously decreed. And His mercy is His love, doing justice to its own exigencies, and renewing the gift which we had failed to accept.

Wisdom, Giving, Justice

Thomas Merton (2002). “No Man Is an Island”, p.237, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.

Wisdom, Integrity, Artist

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.22, New City Press

Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.

Wisdom, Christ, Exile

Thomas Merton, M. Basil Pennington (2005). “Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings”, p.58, New City Press

For our duties and our needs, in all the fundamental things for which we were created, come down in practice to the same thing.

Wisdom, Practice, Needs

You May Also Like: