Thomas Merton Quotes — Page 28

TM

Writer, Monk

Spiritual

“Every moment and every event of everyman's life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of winged seeds, so each moment brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men.”

Men Spiritual Wisdom

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TM

Thomas Merton

Writer, Monk

Philosophical

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.”

Wisdom Decision Useless

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Spiritual

“While some men see ordinary happenings, others see divine light and guidance.”

Men Spiritual

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Philosophical

“Our whole life is a meditation of our last decision - the only decision that matters.”

Matter Decision

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Spiritual

“Life consists in learning to live on one's own, spontaneous, freewheeling: to do this one must recognize what is one's own-be familiar and at home with oneself. This means basically learning who one is, and learning what one has to offer to the contemporary world, and then learning how to make that offering valid.”

Mean Home Offering

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Spiritual

“Creation was given to people as a clean window through which the light of God could shine into people's souls. Sun and moon, night and day, rain, sea, the crops, the flowering tree, all these things were transparent. They spoke to people not of themselves but only of Him who made them. Nature was symbolic. But the progressive degradation of humans led them further and further from this truth. Nature became opaque.”

Nature Moon Rain

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Grateful

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

Way Mercy

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Spiritual

“The speech of God is silence. His Word is solitude.”

Silence Speech

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Love

“To love our nothingness we must love everything in us that the proud man loves when he loves himself. But we must love it all for exactly the opposite reason.”

Men Opposites Proud

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Spiritual

“It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.”

Creating Tasks Mindfulness

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Spiritual

“For language to have meaning, there must be intervals of silence somewhere, to divide word from word and utterance from utterance. He who retires into silence does not necessarily hate language. Perhaps it is love and respect for language which imposes silence upon him. For the mercy of God is not heard in words unless it is heard, both before and after the words are spoken, in silence.”

Hate Silence Mercy Of God

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Spiritual

“Faith is the door to the full inner life of the Church, a life which includes not only access to an authoritative teaching but above all to a deep personal experience which is at once unique and yet shared by the whole Body of Christ, in the Spirit of Christ.”

Doors Teaching Unique

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