Quote

Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost

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
Love
Lost
Absolute
Helping
Despair
Deliberately
Else
Taste
Rotten
Order
Wisdom
Reached
Persons
Knowing
Extreme
Back
Anyone
Extremes
Person
Turns
Luxury
Self
Help
Absolutes

More quotes by Thomas Merton

Image
Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
Thomas Merton
Image
If we are to love sincerely, and with simplicity, we must first of all overcome the fear of not being loved.
Thomas Merton
Image
If you have love you will do all things well.
Thomas Merton
Image
Infinite sharing is the law of God s inner life.
Thomas Merton
Image
The goal of fasting is inner unity.
Thomas Merton
Image
May we all grow in grace and peace and not neglect the silence that is printed in the center of our being. It will not fail us.
Thomas Merton
Image
God, have mercy on me in the blindness in which I hope I am seeking You!
Thomas Merton
Image
If there was no other proof of the infinite patience of God, a very good one could be found in His toleration of the pictures that are painted of Him.
Thomas Merton
Image
Why do we have to spend our lives striving to be something that we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our time doing things which... are just the opposite of what we were made for?
Thomas Merton
Image
To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance to a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience, as joy, as being.
Thomas Merton
Image
Humility sets us free to do what is really good, by showing us our illusions and withdrawing our will from what was only an apparent good.
Thomas Merton
Image
Whose silence are you?
Thomas Merton
Image
Show us your Christ, Lady, after this our exile, yes: but show Him to us also now, show Him to us here, while we are still wanderers.
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
How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?
Thomas Merton
Image
The only thing to seek in contemplative prayer is God and we seek Him successfully when we realize that we cannot find Him unless He shows Himself to us, and yet at the same time that He would not have inspired us to seek Him unless we had already found Him.
Thomas Merton
Image
I cannot make the universe obey me. I cannot make other people conform to my own whims and fancies. I cannot make even my own body obey me.
Thomas Merton
Image
What do I mean by loving ourselves properly? I mean first of all, desiring to live, accepting life as a very great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of what it enables us to give to others.
Thomas Merton
Image
I will no longer wound myself with the thoughts and questions that have surrounded me like thorns: that is a penance You do not ask of me.
Thomas Merton
Image
The center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth.
Thomas Merton