Top Thomas Merton Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Thomas Merton Biography

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Roman Catholic convert, writer, theologian and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion.

Read about Thomas Merton in Wikipedia

Random Authors

Thomas Merton Quotes

Each individual Christian and each new age of the Church has to make this rediscovery, this return to the source of Christian life.

Age, Christian, Church

Prayer is an expression of who we are. . . We are a living incompleteness. We are a gap, an emptiness that calls for fulfillment.

Emptiness, Expression, Living, Prayer, Who We Are

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.

Patient, Peace, Peaceful, Proportionate, Spiritual, Wisdom

Sincerity must be bought at a price: the humility to recognize our innumerable errors, and fidelity in tirelessly setting them right.

Errors, Humility, Recognize, Sincerity, Tirelessly

As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one another, because this love is the resetting of a body of broken bones. Even saints cannot live with saints on this earth without some anguish. There are two things which men can do about the pain of disunion with other men. They can love or they can hate.

Hate, Love, Love Is, Pain, Resetting

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.

Fact, Job, Love, Neighbors, Spiritual, Wisdom

The only influence that can really upset the injustice and iniquity of men is the power that breathes in the Christian tradition, renewing our participation in the Life that is the Light of men.

Breathes, Christian, Light, Men

Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.

Deeper, Heard, Hermits, Inspirational, Self, Yoga

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.

Courage, Faith, Know, Moment, Moving On, Precisely

In meditative prayer, one thinks and speaks not only with the mind and lips, but in a certain sense with one's whole being. . . All good meditative prayer is a conversation of our entire self to God.

Lips, Prayer, Self, Speaks, Thinking, Thinks

We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.

Being True, Know, Knows, Manifest, Manifesting, See

Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist.

Alchemist, Artist, Functions, Prophet, Today, Wisdom

And of course most non-Catholics imagine that the Church is immensely rich, and that all Catholic institutions make money hand over fist, and that all the money is stored away somewhere to buy gold and silver dishes for the Pope and cigars for the College of Cardinals.

College, Hands, Money, Silver, Stored, Wisdom

Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.

Men, Motivational, Order, Person, Vocation

The fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the wind, and join in the general Dance.

Cast, Faith, Inspiration, Invited, Remains, Wind

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.

Anguish, Contemplation, Doubt, Escape, Heart, Meditation

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

Courage, Inspirational, Men, Obsessed, Time, Valued

Our God. . . is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will be our everlasting joy. But if we refuse His love and remain in the coldness of sin and opposition to Him and to other men then will His fire (by our own choice rather than His) become our everlasting enemy, and Love, instead of being our joy, will become our torment and our destruction.

Consuming, Destruction, Love Is, Men, Refuse, Spiritual

No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning.

Become, Life, Long, Man, Men, Tell

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.

Consumption, Man, Mean, Men, Sakes, Technology

1

...