The Wisdom of Thomas Merton

Give each of these Merton quotes a moment. Give more than a moment to some.
Think. Reflect. Ponder. Applaud yourself when the wisdom of a phrase is evident in your life.
Consider the value of the ones you can take to heart, and consider what you will do with them.

Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real.


Solitude is not something you must hope for in the future. Rather, it is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present you will never find it.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

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.

The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom.

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.

The very contradictions in my life are in some ways signs of God's mercy to me.

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of all these living beings, which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.

To consider persons and events and situations only in the light of their effect upon myself is to live on the doorstep of hell.

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.

We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have - for their usefulness.

Quoted of Thomas Merton, born in France of a New Zealand artist father and an American Quaker mother who died when Thomas was just 6 years old. Merton became a Trappist monk of the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky, USA, though he died in a strange accident on a trip to Thailand.

Comments