Thomas Merton Quotes

• We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Even, Most, Darkness

• October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in America, College

  Tags in Wonderful, Time, Anything, Looks, Dangerous

• We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Result, Time, Being, Men

• Just remaining quietly in the presence of God, listening to Him, being attentive to Him, requires a lot of courage and know-how.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in God

  Tags in Presence, Just, Courage

• To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Persons, Effect, Hell, Myself, Situations, Consider

• Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Future

  Tags in Solitude, Present, Rather, Unless, Find, Something, Look

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Give, Time, Seek, Make, Known

• The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Temptation, Human, Little

• Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Life, Soul

  Tags in Earth, Every, Moment, Something, Man

• I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Universe, Body, Make

• What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Discovery, Sailing, Able, Rest, Useless, Important

• Perhaps I am stronger than I think.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Think, Perhaps, Stronger

• Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Good, Own, Reward, Seek, Thing

• If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in History

  Tags in Social, Nations, Want, Hell, Study

• Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Hope, Purpose, Relationships

• In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for “finding himself.” If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Individual, Analysis, Own, Responsibility, Find, Person

• Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Honest, Wheel

• The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God’s mercy to me.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in God, Life

  Tags in Sing, Way

• It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…. Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.

  Thomas Merton

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Solitude, Compassion, Silence

• 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

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Reflection, Own, Beginning, Find, Fit

Thomas Merton (51)

Birth:	31st January, 1915
Death:	10th December, 1968
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Activist, Author, Poet, Writer

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