Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton

Writer, Monk

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and writer known for his profound insights on spirituality, peace, and social justice, particularly in 'The Seven Storey Mountain.'

Wisdom Men Spiritual Mean Thinking Silence
Born
January 31, 1915
Died
December 10, 1968
Quotes
608
Rank
#286

Quote collection

Thomas Merton quotes (page 15 of 31)

608 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Thomas Merton Writer, Monk
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"I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation."

Beautiful Spiritual Atmosphere
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"I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home."

Home Sea Track
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"Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding."

Heart Meditation Doubt
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"Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains."

Spiritual Art Order
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"We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen."

Slow Down Tempo Humans
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"We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us."

Meditation
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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 consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate."

Wisdom Hate Men
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"Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names."

Country Names Teach
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"The peculiar grace of a Shaker chair is due to the fact that it was made by someone capable of believing that an angel might come and sit on it."

Believe Angel Grace
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"I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition."

Mean Exercise Light
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"A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying [God]. It “consents,” so to speak, to [God's] creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree"

Wisdom Mean Essence
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"Ultimately faith is the only key to the universe. The final meaning of human existence, and the answers to the questions on which all our happiness depends cannot be found in any other way."

Keys Finals Answers
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"Contradictions have always existed in the soul of [individuals]. But it is only when we prefer analysis to silence that they become a constant and insoluble problem. We are not meant to resolve all contradictions but to live with them and rise above them and see them in the light of exterior and objective values which make them trivial by comparison."

Light Silence Soul
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"My God, I pray better to you by breathing and walking than by talking, just as in choir I sing best when I am thinking about something else, or better still, praying."

Talking Breathing Praying
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"Advertising treats all products with the reverence and the seriousness due to sacraments."

Advertising Treats Reverence
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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 pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair."

Wisdom Acknowledge Him Evil
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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, you do your work well."

Wisdom Needs World
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"Charity is without fear: having given all that it has, it has nothing left to lose."

Charity Given Loses
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