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
less
The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
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
god-love unhappiness
The only unhappiness is not to love God.
opposites want waste
Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?
mistake ambition together
But there is no substance under the things I have gathered together about me. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am a mistake.
kentucky chosen sanctification
God has brought me to Kentucky...the precise place he has chosen for my sanctification.
errors tree giants
Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
sense-of-humor gentle theologian
A gentle sense of humor will be alert to detect anything that savors of a pious 'act' on the part of the penitent.
despair found i-have-learned
I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is.
sainthood spirituality sanctity
Saints are what they are not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everyone else.
strength strong greater
When we are strong, we are always much greater than the things that happen to us.
famous-love love-is destiny
Love is our true destiny.
mistake mean humility
What does it mean to know and experience my own “nothingness?” It is not enough to turn away in disgust from my illusions and faults and mistakes, to separate myself from them as if they were not, and as if I were someone other than myself. This kind of self-annihilati on is only a worse illusion, it is a pretended humility which, by saying “I am nothing” I mean in effect “I wish I were not what I am.
mercy-of-god needs ashes
Nevertheless, the liturgy of Ash Wednesday is not focussed on the sinfulness of the penitent but on the mercy of God. The question of sinfulness is raised precisely because this is a day of mercy, and the just do not need a savior.