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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.”

MindMeanDoeEndsReasonWholeLightOrderFoundProcessDifferencesAttentionReaderExerciseLaborEmbraceIntuitionFulfillmentComplexityReasoningFacultyMeans To An EndArgumentation
Book:The Ascent to Truth
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“Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison.”

SoulProblemLightValuesIndividualSilenceConstantObjectivesAnalysisContradictionComparisonResolveRise AboveExterior
Author:Thomas Merton
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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 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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“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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“As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.”

MenFeelsLittlesLightSpiritualSpiritChristSunFirePiecesMysteryDivineHe ManPaperAnd LoveGlassesBurningHeatDryRaysMysticalLeafsIncarnationKnotsMagnifyingTruth And LoveMagnifying GlassMystical ExperiencesDry Leaves
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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“There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and integrity is wisdom, the mother of us all, "natura naturans." There is in all things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy. It rises up in wordless gentleness, and flows out to me from the unseen roots of all created being.”

LightActionJoyMotherNatureSilenceIntegrityFlowAll ThingsRootsUnityInvisibleMysteriousPurityVisibleWholenessUnseenSweetnessFountainGentlenessMeek
Author:Thomas Merton
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“In order to find God in ourselves, we must stop looking at ourselves, stop checking and verifying ourselves in the mirror of our own futility, and be content to be in Him and to do whatever He wills, according to our limitations, judging our acts not in the light of our own illusions, but in the light of His reality which is all around us in the things and people we live with.”

PeopleRealityLightOrderJudgingIllusionMirrorsLimitationFutility
Book:Seeds
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“The devil is no fool. He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell. He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin. And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows; not by clarity and substance, but by dreams and the creatures of psychosis. And men are so poor in intellect that a few cold chills down their spine will be enough to keep them from ever finding out the truth about anything.”

PeopleMenWayFeelsMeanDoeEnoughFeelingsWisdomDreamRealityLightHeavenSinPoorHellGraceFoolColdOughtCreaturesFindingsDevilShadowIntellectClaritySubstanceChillObscuritySpineDo Not FearPsychosisFinding Out The Truth
Author:Thomas Merton
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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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“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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“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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“Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to people not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of humans led them further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.”

PeopleHumansMadeSoulLightNightGivenNatureSunTreeSeaCreationMoonRainWindowShiningCleanSpokesProgressiveTransparentCropsSymbolicDegradationFloweringOpaqueMoon NightFlowering Trees
Author:Thomas Merton
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