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Thomas Merton

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Famous Thomas Merton Quotes

“The illusion that mechanical progress means human improvement ... alienates us from our own being and our own reality. It is precisely because we are convinced that our life, as such, is better if we have a better car, a better TV set, better toothpaste, etc., that we condemn and destroy our own reality and the reality of our natural resources. Technology was made for man, not man for technology. In losing touch with being and thus with God, we have fallen into a senseless idolatry of production and consumption for their own sakes.”

IfsMenHumansMeanMadeRealityNaturalTechnologyOur LivesProgressCarTvsLosingIllusionResourcesSakeProductionsConvincedImprovementFallenEtcConsumptionConsumerismIdolatryNatural ResourcesOverconsumptionToothpaste
Book:Seeds
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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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“... Nothing resembles reality less than the photograph. Nothing resembles substance less than its shadow. To convey the meaning of something substantial you have to use not a shadow but a sign, not the limitation but the image. The image is a new and different reality, and of course it does not convey an impression of some object, but the mind of the subject; and that is something else again.”

MindDoeDifferentUseRealityCoursesSubjectsObjectsShadowPhotographImpressionLimitationSubstanceDifferent Realities
Author:Thomas Merton
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“One thing is certain: the humility of faith, if it is followed by the proper consequences-by the acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our providential task-will do far more to launch us into the full current of historical reality than the pompous rationalizations of politicians who think they are somehow the directors and manipulators of history.”

IfsThinkingRealityCertainOne ThingSacrificeAcceptanceHumilityPoliticianDirectorsConsequenceTasksHistoricalCurrentsPompousManipulator
Author:Thomas Merton
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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.”

PeopleIfsMayIdeasEndsFactsWisdomRealityFacesUsedValuesResultsStruggleAchieveDependsOppositesWorthlessPersonal Relationships
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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“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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“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God's eyes. If only they could see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed . . . I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

IfsWayHeartPersonsWarSelfProblemBigsRealityWould BeEyeDesireFallPeaceSinSecretSawsWorshipHatredDown AndDepthGreedCoreCrueltySelf KnowledgeFalling DownUbuntuBig ProblemsCenteringSpiritual Eyes
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.”

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Book:Seeds
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“The basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves.”

WayFirstsHumansLongImportantFactsProblemRealityPoliticalLinesFictionStepsCuttingImpossibleTasksImportant ThingsGenuineThings To DoDimensionsBarriersFirst StepsLong WayIlluminatingPurifyingFabrication
Author:Thomas Merton
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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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“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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“The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there.”

DoeMatterWisdomRealityJoyPurposeSilenceSadnessStrangeDespairComplexesSpheresCosmicPersistMisunderstandingStainsJoyfulnessFinality
Book:New Seeds of Contemplation
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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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