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Wisdom Quotes by Thomas Merton

119 Wisdom quotes by Thomas Merton

All Wisdom quotes Thomas Merton’s page

Thomas Merton writes that peace cannot grow from exclusivity or vague slogans, and that chasing others’ approval is a false foundation. He urges us to stop feeding thoughts that act like thorns and to live fully with body, soul, mind, heart, and spirit. He also says true moral courage, not just intellect, lets the truth of God live inside us.

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Whose silence are you?

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Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.

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The end of the world will be legal.

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What we have to be is what we are.

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Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

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Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.

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In the end, it's the reality of personal realtionships that save everything.

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If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.

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A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly.

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Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him.

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Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.

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Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more.

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I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You…

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And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. it is beyond words, and it is beyond…

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How deluded we sometimes are by the clear notions we get out of books. They make us think that we really understand…

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Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here,…

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The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and…

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In our creation, God asked a question and in our truly living; God answers the question.

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We do not want to be beginners [at prayer]. but let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be…

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We do not want to be beginners. But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else…

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Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone…

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Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of…

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

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Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the…

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The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had…

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To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no…

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God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He…

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We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to…

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If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some…

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You have got me walking up and down all day under those trees, saying to me over and over again, "Solitude, solitude."…

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Merely to resist evil with evil by hating those who hate us and seeking to destroy them, is actually no resistance at…

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“Leaving Things Alone (excerpt) The wise man, then, when he must govern, knows how to do nothing. Letting things alone, he rests…

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There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious unity and…

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I believe we are going to have to prepare ourselves for the difficult and patient task of outgrowing rigid and intransigent nationalism,…

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The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with…

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The soul of man, left to its own natural level, is a potentially lucid crystal left in darkness. It is perfect in…

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Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.

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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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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable

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But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question.

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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…