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Love Quotes by Thomas Merton

143 Love quotes by Thomas Merton

All Love quotes Thomas Merton’s page

Thomas Merton says love begins when we let the people we care for stay exactly as they are, without trying to reshape them. He describes love as a whole‑person response to a perfect value, not just a fleeting feeling. He also links love to inner balance and quiet contemplation.

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The only unhappiness is not to love God.

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Love is perfect in proportion to it's freedom.

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Love winter when the plant says nothing.

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Take more time, cover less ground.

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To be a saint is to be yourself.

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Love is an intensification of life.

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Love is the epiphany of God in our poverty.

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Love is the door to eternity.

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Every moment and every event of every mans life on earth plants something in his soul.

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A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth.

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

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Every breath we draw is a gift of God's love; every moment of existence is a grace.

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The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.

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In the spiritual life there is no such thing as an indifference to love or hate.

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

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A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book.

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Love in fact is the spiritual life, and without it all the other exercises of the spirit, however lofty, are emptied of…

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Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on…

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Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.

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In a world of noise, confusion and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline and peace. In…

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The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit out own…

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Prayer and love are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.

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To become attached to the experience of peace is to threaten the true and essential and vital union of our soul with…

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For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to…

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As long as we are on earth, the love that unites us will bring us suffering by our very contact with one…

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The gift of love is the gift of the power and capacity to love, and therefore, to give love with full effect…

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To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us...and He has given us everything. Every…

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“It is true that God knows Himself in all the things that exist. He sees them, and it is because He sees…

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When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and…

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“We must learn to realize that the love of God seeks us in every situation, and seeks our good. His inscrutable love…

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

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See, see Who God is, see the glory of God, going up to Him out of this incomprehensible and infinite Sacrifice in…

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“We are not only contingent beings, dependent on the love and will of a Creator whom we cannot know experientially except in…

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What is 'grace'? It is God's own life, shared by us. God's life is love. Deus caritas est. By grace we are…

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“Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married…

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“Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently 'scientific' knowledge…

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“For whatever is demanded by truth, by justice, by mercy, or by love must surely be taken to be willed by God.…

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“New eyes awaken. I send Love's name into the world with wings And songs grow up around me like a jungle. Choirs…

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“Those who refuse His mercy satisfy His justice in another way. Without His mercy, they cannot love Him. Without love for Him…

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“We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to 'like' one another. Love governs the will: 'liking' is…

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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…