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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“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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“The modern child may early in his or her existence have natural inclinations toward spirituality. The child may have imagination, originality, a simple and individual response to reality, and even a tendency to moments of thoughtful silence and absorption. All these tendencies, however, are soon destroyed by the dominant culture. The child becomes a yelling, brash, false little monster, brandishing a toy gun or dressed up like some character he has seen on television.”

MayChildrenLittlesMomentsCharacterRealityCultureSpiritualityIndividualImaginationNaturalSimpleExistenceSilenceModernTelevisionGunResponseMonstersTendenciesDestroyedThoughtfulOriginalityToysConsumerismDominantInclinationYellingOverconsumptionDressed UpAbsorptionBrashDominant CultureToy Guns
Author:Thomas Merton
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“In the natural order no matter what ideals may be theoretically possible, most people more or less live for themselves and for their own interests and pleasures or for those of their own family or group, and therefore they are constantly interfering with one another's aims, and hurting one another and injuring one another, whether they mean it or not.”

PeopleMayMeanMatterOrderInterestNaturalHurtPleasureGroupsIdealsAimNo Matter WhatInterfereNatural Order
Book:The Seven Storey Mountain
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“If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.”

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Book:Echoing Silence: Thomas Merton on the Vocation of Writing
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“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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“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.”

MenWantNeedsMayProblemWisdomFacesFeltOur LivesRiskDespairMercyConvincedHopelessComplacencyThresholdVerge
Book:No Man Is an Island
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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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“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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“God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably.... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend. We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves, substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction.”

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Book:From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal
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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.”

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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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“To be risen with Christ means not only that one has a choice and that one may live by a higher law - the law of grace and love - but that one must do so. The first obligation of the Christian is to maintain their freedom from all superstitions, all blind taboos and religious formalities, indeed from all empty forms of legalism.”

FirstsMayMeanChristianFormLawChoicesChristReligiousGraceHigherEmptyAnd LoveBlindObligationLive BySuperstitionsTabooRisenFormalityLegalismHigher LawGrace And Love
Book:He is risen
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“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”

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Book:No Man Is an Island
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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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“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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“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?”

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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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“The thing about Zen is that it pushes contradictions to their ultimate limit where one has to choose between madness and innocence. And Zen. suggests that we may be driving toward one or the other on a cosmic scale. Driving toward them because, one way or the other, as madmen or innocents, we are already there. It might be good to open our eyes and see.”

WayMayMightEyeLimitsUltimateMadnessBe GoodDrivingScalesOne WayInnocenceContradictionCosmicMadmen
Author:Thomas Merton
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“The reality that is present to us and in us: call it being...Silence. And the simple fact that by being attentive, by learning to listen (or recovering the natural capacity to listen) we can find ourself engulfed in such happiness that it cannot be explained: the happiness of being at one with everything in that hidden ground of Love for which there can be no explanations.... May we all grow in grace and peace, and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.”

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Author:Thomas Merton
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