Thomas Merton

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) was an Anglo-American Catholic writer, mystic, Trappist monk, poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

This is what it means to renounce not only pleasures and possessions, but even your own self.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

keep still, and let Him do some work.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

In perfect humility selfishness disappears & your soul no longer lives for itself: it is lost and submerged in Him and transformed into Him.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

It is almost impossible to overestimate the value of true humility

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

We must begin by frankly admitting that the first place in which to go looking for the world is not outside us but in ourselves

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

to love another as a person we have to love him for what he is in himself, and not for what he is to us

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Contemplation is one of the indications of spiritual maturity. It is closely allied to sanctity.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

You cannot save the world merely with a system, have peace without charity, have social order without saints, mystics, and prophets.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Politicians talk about peace is an age in which everybody expects war.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

When we float along in the general noise, we share semiconsciously the mindless mind of Muzak & radio commercials which passes for reality.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

A half diluted consciousness is to be half conscious Yet derive a certain comfort from the vague sense that we are ‘part of’ something.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Noise keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted (1)

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

we are not quite ‘thinking,’ not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. (2)

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

We live in a state of constant semiattention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of the happenings around us.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is so silent: it cannot be spoken.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Love is our true destiny. We will never be fully real until we let ourselves fall in love – either with another human person or with God.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

The contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish &opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt.

[Thomas Merton @ThomasMerton_]

The experience of contemplation is beyond the reach of verbalization and of rationalization.