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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its cliches, it would be time to call in the undertaker... So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me in fact to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life.”

IfsKnowsSometimesMomentsFactsWould BeMovingUsedTurnsFoundWorryDespairDown AndSurfaceSatisfiedWorriedSettlingStreamsDivisionNew BeginningsRenewalClicheDissatisfactionDissatisfiedSettling DownUndertaker
Book:Choosing to Love the World: On Contemplation: Easyread Large Bold Edition
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“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me...you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

KnowsMayIdeasSeemsFacesLostLordShadowNo IdeaLeaving MePerilLeading MeLord GodRight RoadShadow Of DeathNever Leave Me
Author:Thomas Merton
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“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.”

IfsKnowsWayKindMayMatterReasonSeemsBeautifulSpiritualDiesMy OwnWalksMiddleNo Matter WhatClimateBreatheFoolishFamiliarAtmosphereIf I CouldMonkBurstingPurposelessnessAsphyxiation
Book:Encounter: Thomas Merton & D.T. Suzuki
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“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence. Since God cannot be imagined, anything our imagination tells us about Him is ultimately a lie and therefore we cannot know Him as He really is unless we pass beyond everything that can be imagined and enter into an obscurity without images and without the likeness of any created thing.”

IfsKnowsLyingImaginationSilenceDarknessHeardObscurity
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone.”

IfsKnowsMenEndsCitiesDarknessJourneyHumilityOughtPerfectionSalvationWho You AreWork OutWhere You AreAnother ManSanctity
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“The camera does not know what it takes; it captures materials with which you reconstruct, not so much what you saw as what you thought you saw. Hence the best photography is aware, mindful, of illusion and uses illusion, permitting and encouraging it - especially unconscious and powerful illusions that are not usually admitted on the scene.”

KnowsDoeUsePowerfulSawsMaterialsScenePhotographyIllusionCamerasUnconsciousCapture
Book:The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton
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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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“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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“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.”

ThinkingKnowsBelieveMeanDoeIdeasEndsFactsInspirationDesireCertainFaithI BelieveLordPleaseFollowingChristian InspirationalNo IdeaLord God
Book:Dialogues with Silence: Prayers & Drawings
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“Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.”

KnowsLifeWritingArtBookCountryHandsFormWaitingKnow HowMeditationStreetsPrayingPaperTrainDrawingWorks Of ArtBusRidingContemplating
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is. And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsHas BeensStillsRealSelfLanguageIdentityPersonalityEgoWorshipFortunateDisguiseMistakenConcealedPassportsReal SelfPersonal Identity
Author:Thomas Merton
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“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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“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.”

KnowsWholeWisdomRealityLawPrayerPerfectMoralWrittenDivineConscienceFunctionUnionsPerceiveConcreteEnlighteningDivine Law
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“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.”

KnowsMenI CanWisdomLightEarthJoyLostWishLossDarknessBirthAll ThingsDistanceCloudsPossessionAnguishArrivals
Book:A Thomas Merton Reader
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“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.”

KnowsMenWisdomSufferingOrderChristCrossesSalvationSavedSuffering And Death
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“We know when we are following our vocation when our soul is set free from preoccupation with itself and is able to seek God and even to find Him, even though it may not appear to find Him. Gratitude and confidence and freedom from ourselves: these are signs that we have found our vocation and are living up to it even though everything else may seem to have gone wrong. They give us peace in any suffering. They teach us to laugh at despair. And we may have to.”

KnowsGivingMaySoulSeemsAbleSufferingFoundTeachLaughingGoneGratitudeDespairFollowingVocationPreoccupation
Book:No Man Is an Island
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“I believe we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the difficult and patient task of outgrowing rigid and intransigent nationalism, and work slowly towards a world federation of peaceful nations. How will this be possible? Don't ask me. I don't know. But unless we develop a moral, spiritual, and political wisdom that is proportionate to our technological skill, our skill may end us.”

KnowsWorldBelieveMayEndsWisdomSpiritualPoliticalAsksBeliefI BelieveNationsPeaceDifficultMoralSkillsTasksPatientPeacefulPreparationAsk MeNationalismTechnologicalFederationOutgrowingPolitical Wisdom
Book:Witness to Freedom: The Letters of Thomas Merton in Times of Crisis
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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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“What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying “I am nothing” I mean in effect “I wish I were not what I am.”

IfsKnowsKindMeanDoeSelfEnoughTurnsWishMy OwnMistakeEffectsHumilityIllusionFaultsDisgustingNothingness
Book:Thoughts In Solitude
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