The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer. Thomas Merton More Quotes by Thomas Merton More Quotes From Thomas Merton Today the artist has inherited the combined functions of hermit, pilgrim, prophet, priest, shaman, sorcerer, soothsayer, alchemist. Thomas Merton alchemist artist wisdom 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 insecurity anxiety spiritual The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him. Thomas Merton love-is men way Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life. Thomas Merton inner-life infinite law We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others. Thomas Merton loving-others selfish love 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 fancy body people There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork. Thomas Merton form violence fighting If you want to have a spiritual life you must unify your life. A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. Thomas Merton spiritual life-is want The true inner self must be drawn up like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from immersion in the common, the nondescript, the trivial, the sordid, the evanescent. Thomas Merton wisdom jewels self The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68 Thomas Merton destruction liberty causes To love blindly is to love selfishly, because the goal of such love is not the real advantage of the beloved but only the exercise of love in our own souls. Thomas Merton being-single being-alone real The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing. Thomas Merton mediation logical reality 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 the violence of our times. Thomas Merton demand wisdom peace One opens the inner doors of one's heart to the infinite silences of the Spirit, out of whose abysses love wells up without fail and gives itself to all. Thomas Merton heart doors giving You must realize that it is the ordinary way of God's dealings with us that our ideas do not work out speedily and efficiently as we would like them to. The reason for this is not only the loving wisdom of God, but also the fact that our acts have to fit into a great complex pattern that we cannot possibly understand. I have learned over the years that Providence is always a whole lot wiser than any of us, and that there are always not only good reasons, but the very best reasons for the delays and blocks that often seem to us so frustrating and absurd. Thomas Merton block years ideas The danger of education, I have found, is that it so easily confuses means with ends. Worse than that, it quite easily forgets both and devotes itself merely to the mass production of uneducated gradtuates - people literaly unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate and completely artificial charade which they and their contemporaries have conspired to call "life". Thomas Merton atheism mean people We thank Him less by words than by the serene happiness of silent acceptance. It is our emptiness in the presence of His reality, our silence in the presence of His infinitely rich silence, our joy in the bosom of the serene darkness in which His light holds us absorbed, it is all this that praises Him. Thomas Merton acceptance wisdom reality The Bible is not primarily a written or printed text to be scrutinized in private, in a scholar's study or a contemplative cell. It is a body of oral messages, announcements, prophecies, promulgations, recitals, histories, songs of praise, lamentations, etc., which are meant either to be uttered or at least read aloud, or chanted, or sung, or recited in a community convoked for the purpose of a living celebration. Thomas Merton community cells song To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason. Thomas Merton proud opposites men Stop thinking and start looking. Thomas Merton thinking
