
Thomas Merton
American Monastic and Writer
Date of Birth | : | 31 Jan, 1915 |
Date of Death | : | 10 Dec, 1968 |
Place of Birth | : | Prades, France |
Profession | : | Writer, Monastic |
Nationality | : | American |
Thomas Merton OCSO was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist and scholar of comparative religion. On May 26, 1949, he was ordained to the Catholic priesthood and given the name "Father Louis".
Quotes
Total 25 Quotes
In Silence God ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.
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.
When you see God in everyone, then they see God in you.
In the devil's theology, the important thing is to be absolutely right and to prove that everybody else is absolutely wrong.
Let us come alive to the splendor that is all around us and see the beauty in ordinary things.
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.
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.
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.
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
Our real journey in life is interior.