QUOTES by Thomas Merton
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This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68
Quote by -Thomas Merton
....it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness
Quote by -Thomas Merton
"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The solution of the problem of life is life itself. Life is not attained by reason and analysis but first of all by living.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything but beginners, all our life!
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Be still: There is no longer any need of comment. It was a lucky wind That blew away his halo with his cares, A lucky sea that drowned his reputation.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to... fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Ask me not where I live or what I like to eat . . . Ask me what I am living for and what I think is keeping me from living fully that.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The greatest temptations are not those that solicit our consent to obvious sin, but those that offer us great evils masking as the greatest goods.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds
Quote by -Thomas Merton
To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable, it is true.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.
Quote by -Thomas Merton
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
Quote by -Thomas Merton