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World Quotes by Thomas Merton

40 World quotes by Thomas Merton

All World quotes Thomas Merton’s page

One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest, letting the sweet dark warmth become a lifelong companion. The world feels charged with a divine glow, and God is seen everywhere, even in the quiet. Anxiety, though, is often a self‑imposed storm we carry.

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The end of the world will be legal.

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When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time,…

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One might say I have decided to marry the silence of the forest. The sweet dark warmth of the whole world will…

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The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.

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The world is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own…

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If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world.

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Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.

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No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as…

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From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat?…

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On the last day of January 1915, in the second year of the Great War, down in the shadow of some French…

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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 whole world has risen in Christ... If God is 'all in all,' then everything is in fact paradise, because it is…

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

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The only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to…

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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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What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech,…

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The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys…

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The silence of the forest is my bride and the sweet dark warmth of the whole world is my love, and out…

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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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Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of…

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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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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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Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar…

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Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all…

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They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists.…

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It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more…

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The evil in the world is all of our own making, and it proceeds entirely from our ruthless, senseless, wasteful, destructive, and…

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Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by…

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The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist…It…

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By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to…

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Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? He will accept such work only as a…

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Perhaps peace is not, after all, something you work for, or 'fight for.' It is indeed 'fighting for peace' that starts all…

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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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When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of…

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It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They…

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The married man and the mother of a Christian family, if they are faithful to their obligations, will fulfill a mission that…

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Our thought should not merely be an answer to what someone else has just said. Or what someone else might have said.…

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We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God manifests Himself…

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The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of…

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The world of men has forgotten the joys of silence, the peace of solitude, which is necessary, to some extent, for the…

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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…