Skip to content

Spiritual Quotes by Thomas Merton

55 Spiritual quotes by Thomas Merton

All Spiritual quotes Thomas Merton’s page

A person looking beyond the five senses shows a search for deeper meaning. The quotes teach that love should be given without judging worth, that meditation helps the spirit stay awake, and that true spiritual life is built on love, not just good deeds. They also say spiritual direction aims to uncover the hidden core of a life.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.

Image

My spiritual goal is to one day walk into God and disappear.

Image

The goal of fasting is inner unity.

Image

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

Image

For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on…

Image

Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some…

Image

Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered...

Image

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

Image

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

Image

The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.

Image

The spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to…

Image

Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it…

Image

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by…

Image

True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not…

Image

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not…

Image

There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in…

Image

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything that has not already been said better by the wind…

Image

This is the greatest stumbling block in our spiritual discipline, which, in actuality, consists not in getting rid of the self but…

Image

Grace is not a strange, magic substance which is subtly filtered into our souls to act as a kind of spiritual penicillin.…

Image

But it certainly is a wonderful thing to wake up suddenly in the solitude of the woods and look up at the…

Image

Contemplation in the age of Auschwitz and Dachau, Solovky and Karaganda is something darker and more fearsome than contemplation in the age…

Image

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

Image

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a…

Image

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

Image

Our God...is a consuming fire. And if we, by love, become transformed into Him and burn as He burns, His fire will…

Image

As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to…

Image

The only true liberty is in the service of that which is beyond all limits, beyond all definitions, beyond all human appreciation:…

Image

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

Image

“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever…

Image

Place no hope in the feeling of assurance, in spiritual comfort. You may well have to get along without this. Place no…

Image

While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.

Image

Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.

Image

If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual…

Image

True encounter with Christ liberates something within us, a power we did not know we had, a capacity to grow and change.

Image

Love, in fact, is the spiritual life; and without it, all other exercises of the spirit are emptied of content.

Image

It is in the ordinary duties and labors of life that the Christian can and should develop his spiritual union with God.

Image

The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a…

Image

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

Image

On Pride: This sickness is most dangerous when it succeeds in looking like humility. When a proud man thinks he is humble…

Image

Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands…

Image

Other authors on Spiritual

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…