Thomas Merton OCSO was the renowned Trappist monk and one of the most influential Catholic authors and theologians of the 20th century. Inspirational Thomas Merton quotes will uplift your spirits and guide you in the journey of life.
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Most Famous Thomas Merton Quotes
You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. Thomas Merton
The theology of love must seek to deal realistically with the evil and injustice in the world, and not merely to compromise with them
To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything He has given us and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Gratitude, therefore, takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder and to praise the goodness of God. For the grateful person knows that God is good, not by hearsay but by experience. And that is what makes all the difference. Thomas Merton
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them, we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy. Thomas Merton
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. Thomas Merton
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business, and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy
In Silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience. Thomas Merton
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake.
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them. Thomas Merton
The thing to do when you have made a mistake is not to give up doing what you were doing and start something altogether new, but to start over again with the thing you began badly and try, for the love of God, to do it well.
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds Thomas Merton
People don’t want to hear any more words. In our mechanical age, all words have become alike To say God is Love’ is like saying, Eat Wheaties.
In a world of noise, confusion, and conflict it is necessary that there be places of silence, inner discipline, and peace. In such places, love can blossom. Thomas Merton
A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live
The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of contemporary violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activity neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful. Thomas Merton
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 you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead.
When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you. Thomas Merton
The Holy Spirit is the most perfect gift of the Father to men, and yet He is the one gift which the Father gives most easily. Thomas Merton.
Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed but hate these things in yourself, not in another. Thomas Merton
True contemplation is not a psychological trick but a theological grace. It can come to us ONLY as a gift, and not as a result of our own clever use of spiritual techniques. Thomas Merton.
We are not converted only once in our lives but many times and this endless series of conversions and inner revolutions leads to our transformation. Thomas Merton
Attachment to spiritual things is just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else. Thomas Merton
It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister. Thomas Merton
A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire. Thomas Merton
People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. Thomas Merton
If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. Life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. Thomas Merton
Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. Thomas Merton
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him. Thomas Merton.
Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace. Thomas Merton
In Silence, God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience. Thomas Merton
The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most. Thomas Merton
Nothing has ever been said about God that hasn’t already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. Thomas Merton.
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another. Thomas Merton
Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace Thomas Merton
Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things. Thomas Merton
Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him…who loves us, who is near to us. Thomas Merton
Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action. Thomas Merton
There is in every intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know and to see Him, and therefore it cannot be otherwise. Thomas Merton
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Thomas Merton
To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything. Thomas Merton
Do not be too quick to assume your enemy is a savage just because he is your enemy. Perhaps he is your enemy because he thinks you are a savage. Or perhaps he is afraid of you because he feels that you are afraid of him. And perhaps if he believed you are capable of loving him he would no longer be your enemy. Thomas Merton
A humble man is not afraid of failure. In fact, he is not afraid of anything, even himself, since perfect humility implies perfect confidence in the power of God. Thomas Merton
Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train. Thomas Merton
A bad book about the love of God remains a bad book. Thomas Merton
Do not look for rest in any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and joy you have not yet begun to live. Thomas Merton
A Christian is committed to the belief that Love and Mercy are the most powerful forces on earth. Thomas Merton.
The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an interior voice but will not listen to other men. He identifies the will of God with anything that makes him feel, within his own heart, a big, warm, sweet interior glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling is, the more he is convinced of his own infallibility. Thomas Merton
The God of peace is never glorified by human violence. Thomas Merton
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. Thomas Merton
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. Thomas Merton
Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible. Thomas Merton
He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him. Thomas Merton
The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God. Thomas Merton
My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Thomas Merton
Weaknesses and deficiencies play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another. Thomas Merton
Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. Thomas Merton.
Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith. Thomas Merton
If you yourself are at peace, then there is at least some peace in the world. Thomas Merton.
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another Thomas Merton
What I wear is pants. What I do is live. How I pray is to breathe. Thomas Merton
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real. Thomas Merton
But there is greater comfort in the substance of silence than in the answer to a question. Thomas Merton
The basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves. Thomas Merton
Reason is in fact the path to faith, and faith takes over when reason can say no more. Thomas Merton
Prayer is not so much a way to find God as a way of resting in him who loves us, who is near to us. Thomas Merton , Thomas Merton quotes on prayer
The greatest need of our time is to clean out the enormous mass of mental and emotional rubbish that clutters our minds Thomas Merton
In humility is the greatest freedom. As long as you have to defend the imaginary self that you think is important, you lose your peace of heart. As soon as you compare that shadow with the shadows of other people, you lose all joy, because you have begun to trade in unrealities and there is no joy in things that do not exist. Thomas Merton
Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things. Thomas Merton
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God’s will, to be what God wants us to be. Thomas Merton
We have what we seek, it is there all the time, and if we give it time, it will make itself known to us. Thomas Merton
Paradoxically, I have found peace because I have always been dissatisfied. My moments of depression and despair turn out to be renewals, new beginnings. If I were once to settle down and be satisfied with the surface of life, with its divisions and its cliches, it would be time to call in the undertaker So, then, this dissatisfaction which sometimes used to worry me and has certainly, I know, worried others, has helped me, in fact, to move freely and even gaily with the stream of life. Thomas Merton
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton
Our real journey in life is interior. Thomas Merton
You are made in the image of what you desire. Thomas Merton
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? Thomas Merton
Perhaps I am stronger than I think. Thomas Merton
Before we can realize who we really are, we must become conscious of the fact that the person we think we are, here and now, is at best an impostor and a stranger. Thomas Merton
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm Thomas Merton
