Quotes by Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) — Trappistenmönch, Autor · Katholisch · USA
Thomas Merton (1915–1968) war ein US-amerikanischer Trappistenmönch, Priester und Autor, der in der Abtei Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky lebte und wirkte. Bekannt durch seine Autobiografie „Der Berg der sieben Stufen“, verband er christliche Kontemplation mit gesellschaftspolitischem Engagement gegen Krieg und Ungerechtigkeit, stieß jedoch mit seinem Dialog mit östlichen Religionen und seinem Pazifismus auch auf Kritik. Heutigen Bibellesern bietet er Impulse für ein vertieftes Gebetsleben in der Stille sowie für die Verbindung von persönlicher Mystik und sozialer Verantwortung.
Era: The 20th Century
Recurring topics: Meaning & Identity, Wisdom & Understanding, Peace & Rest, God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit, Faith & Trust, Love, Prayer & Silence, Growth & Character
Quotes 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.
Thomas Merton
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.
Thomas Merton
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith and hope.
Thomas Merton
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times.
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.
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!
Thomas Merton
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.
Thomas Merton
A saint is not someone who is good, but someone who experiences the goodness of God.
Thomas Merton
Yet I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
Thomas Merton
What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is breathe.
Thomas Merton
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
Thomas Merton
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.
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.
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.
Thomas Merton
Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.
Thomas Merton
Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.
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.
Thomas Merton
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it all the rest are not only useless but disastrous.
Thomas Merton
Be good, keep your feet dry, your eyes open, your heart at peace, and your soul in the joy of Christ.
Thomas Merton
When we are utterly finished, there is no way out anymore. The decision we can still make then comes from a heart full of darkness — and then we, who were completely destroyed and believed ourselves in hell, suddenly, wonderfully, decide for God.
Thomas Merton
There is a pervasive form of modern violence… activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.
Thomas Merton
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone, we find it with another.
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.
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.
Thomas Merton
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.
Thomas Merton
There is only one problem on which all my existence, my peace, my happiness depend: to discover myself in discovering God.
Thomas Merton
To be unknown to God is entirely too much privacy.
Thomas Merton
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.
Thomas Merton
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
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.
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.
Thomas Merton
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present.
Thomas Merton
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton
As soon as you are really alone you are with God.
Thomas Merton
We can be glad of our weakness when we truly understand that his power is expressed in our weakness.
Thomas Merton
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton
Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
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.
Thomas Merton
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.
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.
Thomas Merton
91 quotes in total — browse the collection.
Sources: lentmadness.org, americamagazine.org, fordham.edu, comment.org
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