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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives. They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint...They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else's experiences or write somebody else's poems.”

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Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash - at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance.”

KnowsLifeHeartChildrenMomentsNightValuesChanceVisionLandPoetQuietBirdAwakeningPurityEmptinessAutumnCosmicSolitaryEvidentGlimpseAwakenedFrogsPondsNewnessDescendingGrove
Author:Thomas Merton
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“To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us - and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude therefore takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise of the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference.”

KnowsPersonsMomentsFaithGivenDifferencesExistenceWonderGraceGratitudeGoodnessDrawsPraiseBreathsGratefulAwakeningGrantedGod LoveImmenseBe GratefulHis LoveLove And GratitudeGoodness Of GodLove GratitudeHearsayTake Nothing For GrantedUnresponsive
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Keeping a journal has taught me that there is not so much new in your life as you sometimes think. When you re-read your journal you find out that your latest discovery is something you already found out five years ago. Still, it is true that one penetrates deeper and deeper into the same ideas and the same experiences.”

ThinkingYearsStillsIdeasSometimesFoundFiveTaughtDiscoveryYears AgoDeeperFive YearsJournalPenetrateKeeping A Journal
Book:The Sign of Jonas
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“Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age of the Church Fathers. For that very reason, the urge to seek a path of spiritual light can be a subtle temptation to sin. It certainly is sin if it means a frank rejection of the burden of our age, an escape into unreality and spiritual illusion, so as not to share the misery of other men.”

IfsMenMeanReasonLightAgeSpiritualFatherChurchSinPathShareIllusionMiseryBurdenTemptationContemplationRejectionSubtleUrgesFrankAuschwitzUnrealitySpiritual LightChurch FathersDachau
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

ThinkingMenSometimesEnoughWisdomLightHeavenPrayerOpinionImagineAngelIntelligentRealmsGatesBe A ManGates Of Heaven
Book:The Ascent to Truth
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“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”

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Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.”

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Book:No Man Is an Island
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“First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find the meaning of life no doubt. But in the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself." If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you?”

IfsKnowsMenFirstsPersonsHelpingLastsIndividualCommonExistenceResponsibilityDestinyDoubtFailingIdentityFindingsResponsibleSalvationWho You AreWork OutWho I AmAnalysisMeaning Of LifeNo DoubtPersistShiftingTrembling
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon.”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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“It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4)”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

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Book:Thomas Merton: I Have Seen what I was Looking for : Selected Spiritual Writings
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