Do not be too quick to condemn the man who no longer believes in God: for it is perhaps your own coldness and avarice and mediocrity and materialism and selfishness that have chilled his faith.
THOMAS MERTONViolence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us.
More Thomas Merton Quotes
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May God prevent us from becoming “right-thinking men”-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
THOMAS MERTON -
Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.
THOMAS MERTON -
Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
THOMAS MERTON -
Love is not a matter of getting what you want. Quite the contrary. The insistence on always having what you want, on always being satisfied, on always being fulfilled, makes love impossible.
THOMAS MERTON -
Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.
THOMAS MERTON -
What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?
THOMAS MERTON -
Every breath we draw is a gift of God’s love; every moment of existence is a grace.
THOMAS MERTON -
A happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found: for a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy.
THOMAS MERTON -
For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
THOMAS MERTON -
The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.
THOMAS MERTON -
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
THOMAS MERTON -
We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.
THOMAS MERTON -
Compassion is the keen awareness of the interdependence of all things.
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Our real journey in life is interior; It is a matter of growth, deepening, and of an ever greater surrender to the creative action of love and grace in our hearts. Never was it more necessary to respond to that action.
THOMAS MERTON -
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
THOMAS MERTON