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
Thomas Merton quotes about
fighting violence form
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs; activism and overwork.
country names teach
Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.
perfection substance moral
We cannot possess the truth fully until it has entered into the very substance of our life by good habits, and by a certain perfection of moral activity.
jesus humility heart
Spread abroad the name of Jesus in humility and with a meek heart; show him your feebleness, and he will become your strength.
people kind felt
That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.
long assuming center-of-the-universe
The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
order complacency vices
The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
eye thinking giving
We must suffer. Our five sense are dulled by inordinate pleasure. Penance makes them keen, gives them back their natural vitality, and more. Penance clears the eye of conscience and of reason. It helps think clearly, judge sanely. It strengthens the action of our will.
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 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
religious book people
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
imagination kind obscure
We refuse love, and reject society, in so far as it seems, in our own perverse imagination, to imply some obscure kind of humiliation
today desert problem
The problem today is that there are no deserts, only dude ranches.
god-love unhappiness
The only unhappiness is not to love God.