Quotes about wisdom
wisdom thinking hair
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 am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Thomas Merton
wisdom spiritual worry
Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. Thomas Merton
wisdom communication speech
The deepest of level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless ... beyond speech ... beyond concept. Thomas Merton
wisdom end-of-the-world world
The end of the world will be legal. Thomas Merton
wisdom solitude way
Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism. Thomas Merton
wisdom may rewards
True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy. Thomas Merton
wisdom acceptance reality
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
wisdom atheist real
The real reason why so few men believe in God is that they have ceased to believe that even a God can love them. Thomas Merton
wisdom mean self
For me to be a saint means to be myself. Therefore the problem of sanctity and salvation is in fact the problem of finding out who I am and of discovering my true self. Thomas Merton
wisdom truth discovery
The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error. Thomas Merton
wisdom dwelling light
We cannot arrive at the perfect possession of God in this life, and that is why we are travelling and in darkness. But we already possess Him by grace, and therefore in that sense we have arrived and are dwelling in the light. But oh! How far have I to go to find You in Whom I have already arrived! Thomas Merton
wisdom world needs
When you expect the world to end at any moment, you know there is no need to hurry. You take your time, you do your work well. Thomas Merton
wisdom real two
We have the choice of two identities: the external mask which seems to be real...and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing, but who can give himself eternally to the truth in whom he subsists. (295) Thomas Merton
wisdom struggle reality
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. Thomas Merton
wisdom passion light
The light of truth burns without a flicker in the depths of a house that is shaken with storms of passion and fear. Thomas Merton
wisdom self order
Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost Thomas Merton
wisdom heart carpe-diem
If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit. Thomas Merton
wisdom
What we have to be is what we are. Thomas Merton
wisdom writing men
If you write for God you will reach many men and bring them joy. If you write for men--you may make some money and you may give someone a little joy and you may make a noise in the world, for a little while. If you write for yourself, you can read what you yourself have written and after ten minutes you will be so disgusted that you will wish that you were dead. Thomas Merton
wisdom heaven house
There are days when I am convinced that Heaven starts already, now, in this ordinary life just as it is, in all its incompleteness, yet, this is where Heaven starts.. see within yourself, if you can find it. I walked through the field in front of the house, lots of swallows flying, everywhere! Some very near me..it was magical. "We are already one, yet we know it not. Thomas Merton
wisdom destiny work-out
Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny....To work out our identity in God. Thomas Merton
wisdom sadness reality
The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Thomas Merton
wisdom may sometimes
God, Who is everywhere, never leaves us. Yet He seems sometimes to be present, sometimes to be absent. If we do not know Him well, we do not realize that He may be more present to us when He is absent than when He is present. Thomas Merton
wisdom ideas
Our idea of God tells us more about ourselves than about Him. Thomas Merton
wisdom men order
It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential meaning of the created and the material cosmos. Science without wisdom leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's own pointless existence. (p. 4) Thomas Merton
wisdom book love-you
Surrender your own poverty and acknowledge your nothingness to the Lord. Whether you understand it or not, God loves you, is present in you, lives in you, dwells in you, calls you, saves you and offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon. Thomas Merton
wisdom men succeed
A man who fails well is greater than one who succeeds badly. Thomas Merton
wisdom people survival
I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. If modern people were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of their absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be the possibility of their survival. Thomas Merton
wisdom violence cease
Violence is not completely fatal until it ceases to disturb us. Thomas Merton
wisdom destiny want
For each one of us, there is only one thing necessary: to fulfill our own destiny, according to God's will, to be what God wants us to be. Thomas Merton
wisdom true-life life-is
We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full. Thomas Merton
wisdom passion order
We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest. Thomas Merton
wisdom men risk
Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair. Thomas Merton