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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“I just remember their kindness and goodness to me, and their peacefulness and their utter simplicity. They inspired real reverence, and I think, in a way, they were certainly saints. And they were saints in that most effective and telling way: sanctified by leading ordinary lives in a completely supernatural manner, sanctified by obscurity, by usual skills, by common tasks, by routine, but skills, tasks, routine which received a supernatural form from grace within.”

ThinkingWayRealRememberFormCommonKindnessGraceSkillsGoodnessOrdinaryTasksInspiredSimplicitySaintRoutineUsualReverenceObscurityOrdinary LifePeacefulness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

IfsThinkingKnowsTryingHas BeensBookMatterFactsWisdomHandsFormLinesGoneOne ThingCrazyResponsibleFortuneCellsEnlightenedPalmsPsychoanalysisMatter Of FactDopeOld WomanGone Crazy
Author:Thomas Merton
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“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”

HumansWholeWisdomBodyDesireOrderPassionPolicyProductsLimitsHighestPressesStudiosTensionNervesFactoriesArtificialStrainHuman BodyPrintingPrinting PressSynthetic
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in its own nature, but it lacks something that it can only receive from outside and above itself. But when the light shines in it, it becomes in a manner transformed into light and seems to lose its nature in the splendor of a higher nature, the nature of the light that is in it.”

MenSoulWisdomLightSeemsLeftLosesNaturalPerfectLevelsDarknessHigherShiningTransformedCrystalsSplendor
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!”

IfsMenLifeRealWisdomLastsImaginationOpinionStrangeDependsPerfectionLogicErrorsWorldlyApplauseFallacyWeird Life
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.”

WholeBodySpiritChristChurchDoorsTeachingUniqueAccessInner LifePersonal ExperiencesBody Of Christ
Book:The Golden Age of Zen: Zen Masters of the T'Ang Dynasty
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“A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.”

IfsThinkingKnowsMenMindMayIdeasRealityActionDestinyActivityConceptsDestructiveSubstitutesOur Destiny
Book:Thoughts In Solitude
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“The question of love is one that cannot be evaded. Whether or not you claim to be interested in it from the moment you are alive you are bound to be concerned with love because love is not just something that happens to you: It is a certain special way of being alive. Love is in fact an intensification of life a completeness a fullness a wholeness of life.”

WayPhilosophyMomentsFactsHappensCertainLove IsAliveSpecialConcernedClaimsPhilosophicalBoundsWholenessFullnessCompleteness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts.. see within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me..it was magical. "We are already one, yet we know it not.”

IfsKnowsWisdomHouseHeavenFrontsFieldsOrdinaryConvincedFlyingOrdinary LifeIncompleteness
Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

KnowsDoneWisdomPurposeOrderEvilSecretShareDivineGloryAll ThingsStriveGods WillChosenObedienceDivine Purpose
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“Everything in modern city life is calculated to keep man from entering into himself and thinking about spiritual things. Even with the best of intentions a spiritual man finds himself exhausted and deadened and debased by the constant noise of machines and loudspeakers, the dead air and the glaring lights of offices and shops, the everlasting suggestion of advertising and propaganda. The whole mechanism of modern life is geared for a flight from God and from the spirit into the wilderness of neurosis.”

ThinkingMenWholeLightSpiritualLife IsSpiritCitiesMeditationAirModernOfficeMachinesConstantIntentionNoiseFlightAdvertisingPropagandaShopsWildernessMechanismExhaustedSuggestionsEnteringEverlastingModern LifeNeurosisCity Life
Author:Thomas Merton
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“Our Christian destiny is, in fact, a great one: but we cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great. For our own idea of greatness is illusory, and if we pay too much attention to it we will be lured out of the peace and stability of the being God gave us, and seek to live in a myth we have created for ourselves. And when we are truly ourselves we lose most of the futile self-consciousness that keeps us constantly comparing ourselves with others in order to see how big we are.”

IfsIdeasSelfFactsWisdomBigsChristianOrderInterestLosesPayAttentionConsciousnessDestinyToo MuchAchieveGreatnessMythCompareStabilitySelf ConsciousnessGreat OnesIllusoryAchieve Greatness
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a 'means of livelihood' while he waits to discover his 'true vocation'. The world is full of unsuccessful businessmen who still secretly believe they were meant to be artists or writers or actors in the movies.”

WorldBelieveMeanStillsWisdomJobsArtistActorsWaitingAcceptingWillingSatisfiedLimitationMeant To BeBusinessmanVocationLivelihoodUnsuccessfulWere Meant To Be
Book:Seeds
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“But the man who is not afraid to admit everything that he sees to be wrong with himself, and yet recognizes that he may be the object of God's love precisely because of his shortcomings, can begin to be sincere. His sincerity is based on confidence, not in his own illusions about himself, but in the endless, unfailing mercy of God.”

MenMayObjectsIllusionMercyEndlessSincereSincerityNot AfraidShortcomingsGod's LoveGod Is LoveMercy Of God
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.”

PeopleKnowsMenMayMatterWisdomRealityEnjoyNaturalLonelinessSolitudeIllusionLonelyInvisibleSurroundCompanionshipRecollectionTiresomeSatietyAlone With God
Author:Thomas Merton
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