Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O.was an American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion. In 1949, he was ordained to the priesthood and given the name Father Louis...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth31 January 1915
CityPrades, France
CountryUnited States of America
loneliness being-alone profound
Yet it is in this loneliness that the deepest activities begin. It is here that you discover act without motion, labor that is profound repose, vision in obscurity, and, beyond all desire, a fulfillment whose limits extend to infinity.
wisdom lonely loneliness
The man who fears to be alone will never be anything but lonely, no matter how much he may surround himself with people. But the man who learns, in solitude and recollection, to be at peace with his own loneliness, and to prefer its reality to the illusion of merely natural companionship, comes to know the invisible companionship of God. Such a one is alone with God in all places, and he alone truly enjoys the companionship of other men, because he loves them in God in Whom their presence is not tiresome, and because of Whom his own love for them can never know satiety.
loneliness solitude soul
I shall lead you through the loneliness, the solitude you will not understand; but it is my shortcut to your soul.
belongs center disposes entirely fantasies god mind point pure sin spark spirit-and-spirituality
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.
alone life love meaning ourselves true valentines-day
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
less
The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
anxiety avoid begin fear hurt people proportion smaller suffering torture truth until
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 because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt
compassion condemn fears hate irrational mania men patient
We have to have a deep, patient compassion for the fears of men and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us.
spiritual encounters christ
True encounter with Christ liberates something within us, a power we did not know we had, a capacity to grow and change.
power men guarantees
For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture.
cannot followed lose rides shoulders writer
There was this shadow, this double, this writer who had followed me into the cloister. He rides my shoulders I cannot lose him.
alone begin convinced exist fact fully love ourselves properly thus
We do not exist for ourselves alone, and it is only when we are fully convinced of this fact that we begin to love ourselves properly and thus also love others.
author chicken duck instead monastery
An author in a Trappist monastery is like a duck in a chicken coop. And he would give anything in the world to be a chicken instead of a duck.
spiritual depth action
Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered...