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Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Merton

61 Inspirational quotes by Thomas Merton

All Inspirational quotes Thomas Merton’s page

A winter plant stands silent, yet we are urged to love it. The quotes stress that true happiness comes from balance, rhythm, and harmony, not just intensity. They warn that over‑thinking blocks the unconscious, urging us to stop thinking, start looking, and live the thoughts we truly hold.

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Love winter when the plant says nothing.

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Love is an intensification of life.

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The gate of heaven is everywhere.

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Thinking prevents the unconscious from speaking.

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To be a saint is to be yourself.

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Take more time, cover less ground.

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Music and art and poetry attune the soul to God.

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Lovely morning! How lovely life can be!

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I can only become perfectly free by serving the will of God.

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We are already ONE. We just think we are separate.

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"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy.

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The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.

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When we are strong, we are always much greater than the things that happen to us.

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To worship our false selves is to worship nothing. And the worship of nothing is hell.

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A faith that is afraid of other people is not faith at all.

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When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.

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Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it.

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What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

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We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads…

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One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is…

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He who hopes in God trusts God, Whom he never sees, to bring him to the possession of things that are beyond…

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Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him...who loves us, who is near…

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“Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom…

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I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place … It is certainly part…

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As long as I am content to know that He is infinitely greater than I, and that I cannot know Him unless…

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God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice…

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“It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we…

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Today will never come again.

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Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

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For me to be a saint means to be myself.

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If you have love you will do all things well.

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My best writing has always been in journals.

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You are made in the image of what you desire.

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Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life.

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Stop thinking and start looking.

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Love is our true destiny.

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I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.

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The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.

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God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!

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The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.

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More by Thomas Merton

“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude…

If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must…

It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility and its power in the spiritual life. For the beginning of humility is…

We are not perfectly free until we live in pure hope. For when our hope is pure, it no longer trusts exclusively in human…

The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red -hot iron: I have to pick up the…

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a…

The mission of Christian humility in social life is not merely to edify, but to keep minds open to many alternatives. The rigidity of…

Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in…

Things that are good are good, and if one is responding to that goodness one is in contact with a truth from which one…

Love winter when the plant says nothing.

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of…

“The wisdom of the flesh is a judgement that the ordinary ends of our natural appetites are the goods to which the whole of…

I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not…

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…

“Contemplation means rest, suspension of activity, withdrawal into the mysterious interior solitude in which the soul is absorbed in the immense and fruitful silence…