Thomas Merton Quotes — Page 24

TM

Writer, Monk

Spiritual

“We do not pray for the sake of praying, but for the sake of being heard. We do not pray in order to listen to ourselves praying but in order that God may hear us and answer us. Also, we do not pray in order to receive just any answer: it must be God's answer.”

May Order Answers

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TM

Thomas Merton

Writer, Monk

Spiritual

“When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.”

World Prayer Silence

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Love

“If you have love you will do all things well.”

Inspirational Love

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Calm

“We must slow down to a human tempo and we’ll begin to have time to listen.”

Humans Slow Down

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Courageous

“The devil makes many disciples by preaching against sin. He convinces them that the great evil of sin, induces a crisis of guilt by which “God is satisfied," and after that he lets them spend the rest of their lives meditating on the intense sinfulness and evident reprobation of other men.”

Men Evil Guilt

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Spiritual

“I have my own way to walk and for some reason or other Zen is right in the middle of it wherever I go. So there it is, with all its beautiful purposelessness, and it has become very familiar to me though I do not know "what it is." Or even if it is an "it." Not to be foolish and multiply words, I'll say simply that it seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk, no matter what kind of monk he may be. If I could not breathe Zen I would probably die of spiritual asphyxiation.”

Beautiful Spiritual Atmosphere

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Spiritual

“We become contemplatives when God discovers Himself in us.”

Meditation

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Spiritual

“Teach me to go to the country beyond words and beyond names.”

Country Names

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Hopeful

“I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home.”

Home Sea Track

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Inspired

“Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding.”

Heart Doubt Meditation

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Spiritual

“Art is not an end in itself. It introduces the soul into a higher spiritual order, which it expresses and in some sense explains.”

Art Spiritual Order

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Courageous

“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.”

Men Hate Wisdom

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