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
christian church way
To those who have no personal experience of this revolutionary aspect of Christian truth, but who see only the outer crust of dead, human conservatism that tends to form around the Church the way barnacles gather on the hull of a ship, all this talk about dynamism sounds foolish.
love-is special way
Love is a special way of being alive.
sake way doe
Cupidity...takes created things for ends in themselves, which they are not. The will that seeks rest in creatures for their own sake stops on the way to its true end, terminates in a value which does not exist, and thus frustrates all its deepest capacities for happiness and peace.
way strange unexpected
I can depend less and less on my own power and sense of direction...It is so strange to advance backwards and get where you are going in a totally unexpected way
way logic language
The logic of the poet - that is, the logic of language or the experience itself - develops the way a living organism grows: it spreads out towards what it loves, and is heliotropic, like a plant.
way ordinary routine
The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary every day routine.
men world way
The only right way: to love and serve the man of the modern world, but not simply to succumb, with him, to all his illusions about the world.
wisdom ambition way
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already am. That I will never fulfill my obligation to surpass myself unless I first accept myself, and if I accept myself fully in the right way, I will already have surpassed myself.
way mercy contradiction
The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.
prayer way
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...
love-is men way
The only way to make a man worthy of love is by loving him.
wisdom solitude way
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
real thinking way
The real hope is not in something we think we can do, but in God, who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see.
doors knowing way
Actions are the doors and windows of being. Unless we act, we have no way of knowing what we are.