Quote

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

Thomas Merton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Merton
Age: 53 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 15
Died: 1968
Died: December 10
Autobiographer
Catholic Priest
Essayist
Journalist
Peace Activist
Poet
Theologian
Trappist Cistercian Monk
Writer
Thomas Feverel Merton
Father Louis
Good
Leaves
Love
Rewards
Therefore
Effects
Loved
Care
Secondary
Take
Seeks
Thing
Reward

More quotes by Thomas Merton

Image
People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.
Thomas Merton
Image
God utters me like a word containing a partial thought of him. A word will never be able to comprehend the voice that utters it. But if I am true to the concept that God utters in me, if I am true to the thought of Him that I was meant to embody, I shall be full of his actuality and find him everywhere in myself, and find myself nowhere.
Thomas Merton
Image
If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.
Thomas Merton
Image
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.
Thomas Merton
Image
The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.
Thomas Merton
Image
A daydream is an evasion.
Thomas Merton
Image
If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
Thomas Merton
Image
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.
Thomas Merton
Image
God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!
Thomas Merton
Image
O love-why can't you leave me alone? Which is a rhetorical question meaning: for heaven's sake, don't.
Thomas Merton
Image
For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self YOU have wanted for me, only the self that I have wanted : And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in your own Son's self ... and it is He Who Presents me to You.
Thomas Merton
Image
Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.
Thomas Merton
Image
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Thomas Merton
Image
Curiously, the most serious religious people, or the most concerned scholars, those who constantly read the Bible as a matter of professional or pious duty, can often manage to evade a radically involved dialogue with the book they are questioning.
Thomas Merton
Image
What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?
Thomas Merton
Image
From the moment you put a piece of bread in your mouth you are part of the world. Who grew the wheat? Who made the bread? Where did it come from? You are in relationship with all who brought it to the table. We are least separate and most in common when we eat and drink.
Thomas Merton
Image
To be alone by being part of the universe-fitting in completely to an environment of woods and silence and peace. Everything you do becomes a unity and a prayer. Unity within and without.
Thomas Merton
Image
For power can guarantee the interests of some men but it can never foster the good of man. Power always protects the good of some at the expense of all the others. Only love can attain and preserve the good of all. Any claim to build the security of all on force is a manifest imposture.
Thomas Merton
Image
The meaning of life is found in openness to being and being present in full awareness.
Thomas Merton
Image
The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.
Thomas Merton