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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the thing necessary for us-whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need”

IfsNeedsMayAbleLastsOne ThingMissingMastersTasteDrainsDregs
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“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?”

IfsThinkingWantTryingKindI CanDoneWisdomLevelsFiguresRaisesLabelsCategoriesWant MeAlways Trying
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“Once you have grace," I said to him, "you are free. Without it, you cannot help doing the things you know you should not do, and that you know you don't really want to do. But once you have grace, you are free. When you are baptized, there is no power in existence that can force you to commit a sin-nothing that will be able to drive you to it against your own conscience. And if you merely will it, you will be free forever, because the strength will be given you, as much as you need, and as often as you ask, and as soon as you ask, and generally long before you ask for it, too.”

IfsKnowsWantNeedsShouldLongSaidHelpingWisdomAbleAsksGivenForceSinExistenceForeverGraceConscienceCommitBaptized
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“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.”

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Book:Charter, Customs, and Constitutions of the Cistercians: Initiation into the Monastic Tradition 7
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“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.”

WisdomReligiousClassCasesTeachingSittingIdealsTablesNotionPracticalsEthicalVagueObscureMixturesRemarksDemonstrationLiableDegeneratesRowingHygieneOarPersonal Hygiene
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“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.”

IfsMindMayWisdomLawNightValuesDiesPayAttentionMoralWorryMinutesConditionsStupidDependsThousandStandardsDetailsRidiculousSillySanityImaginaryVagueVitalityTerrificSanctionsOf My MindOld WomanMoral Law
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

MenWisdomSpiritChristBornAnswersSonHolyGods WillRationalHoly SpiritFree WillReach OutConsentInheritance
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“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?”

WayMayWisdomFoundLordLandLaborBreadMy WayEgyptMy Thoughts
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“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.”

StillsRealWisdomPassionStrongSacrificeCrossesProfoundSatisfactionDevotionPerformingStationsSensibleNeverthelessMy PassionConsoling
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

WisdomHandsCoursesChurchRichImagineCollegeGoldCatholicInstitutionsMaking MoneySilverImagine ThatDishesPopeFistsCigarCardinalsGold And Silver
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“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?”

WorldMindWisdomBehindsHalfTreeFeetNew YorkWalkingSolitudeAll ThingsBallsNoiseChainsContemplationThrownTiedLapUp And DownPillarsFollow MeKneeling
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.”

DoeMatterWisdomRealityJoyPurposeSilenceSadnessStrangeDespairComplexesSpheresCosmicPersistMisunderstandingStainsJoyfulnessFinality
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“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”

SoulWisdomLightSpiritualMoralOur LivesSacrificeDependsGods WillSuperiorsFortitudeMoral CourageGod LifeTruth Of GodSpiritual Intelligence
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“I am willing to admit that some people might live there for years, or even a lifetime, so protected that they never sense the sweet stench of corruption that is all around them - the keen, thin scent of decay that pervades everything and accuses with a terrible accusation the superficial youthfulness, the abounding undergraduate noise, that fills those ancient buildings.”

PeopleYearsMightBuildingCollegeWillingSweetTerribleLifetimeUniversityAncientCorruptionNoiseProtectedDecayScentSuperficialAccusationYouthfulnessUndergraduate
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no hope in the inspirational preachers of Christian sunshine, who are able to pick you up and set you back on your feet and make you feel good for three or four days-until you fold up and collapse into despair. Self-confidence is a precious natural gift, a sign of health. But it is not the same thing as faith. Faith is much deeper, and it must be deep enough to subsist when we are weak, when we are sick, when our self-confidence is gone, when our self-respect is gone.”

FeelsWellsMaySoulSelfEnoughFeelingsAbleChristianSpiritualThreeNaturalGoneFourFeetComfortDespairPicksWeakSickDeeperSelf ConfidenceFeel GoodSelf RespectSunshineCollapsePreacherAssuranceFoldsNo HopeMake You Feel GoodNatural Gifts
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“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.”

WayArtLightTogetherImaginationCreativeSeeingSpecialTasksSymbolsFacultyDiscoveringJoining
Book:Contemplation in a World of Action: Second Edition, Restored and Corrected
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“Our technological society has no longer any place in it for wisdom that seeks truth for its own sake, that seeks the fullness of being, that seeks to rest in an intuition of the very ground of all being. Without wisdom, the apparent opposition of action and contemplation, of work and rest, of involvement and detachment, can never be resolved.”

TruthActionSakeIntuitionContemplationOppositionTechnologicalFullnessInvolvementDetachment
Book:Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation
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“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.”

DoeHateLanguageSilenceHeardMercyDividesRetiringIntervalsUtteranceLove And RespectBefore And AfterMercy Of God
Book:The Power and Meaning of Love
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“To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.”

UniversePrayerSilenceEnvironmentUnityWoodsFittingSilence And Peace
Book:A Search for Solitude: Pursuing the Monk's True Life, The Journals of Thomas Merton, Volume 3: 1952-1960
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“Not only does silence give us a chance to understand ourselves better, to get a truer and more balanced perspective on our own lives in relation to the lives of others: silence makes us whole if we let it. Silence helps draw together the scattered and dissipated energies of a fragmented existence.”

IfsGivingDoeWholeHelpingTogetherEnergyChanceExistenceSilencePerspectiveDrawsRelationBalancedLives Of OthersFragmentedGive Us A Chance
Book:Love and Living
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