Quote

For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air.

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
Fall
Falling
Find
Despair
Air
Walking
Instead
Brink
Perfect
Achieved
Hope
Edge
Spiritual
Edges

More quotes by Thomas Merton

Image
The land which thou goest to possess is not like the land of Egypt from whence thou camest out... For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your ways my ways, saith the Lord...Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near...Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labor for that which doth not satisfy you?
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
The biggest disease in North America is busyness.
Thomas Merton
Image
This is the crucifixion of Christ: in which He dies again and again in the individuals who were made to share the joy and freedom of His grace, and who deny Him.
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
Humble people can do great things with uncommon perfection because they are no longer concerned about their own interests and their own reputation, and therefore they no longer need to waste their efforts in defending them.
Thomas Merton
Image
It is easy enough to tell the poor to accept their poverty as Gods will when you yourself have warm clothes and plenty of food and medical care and a roof over your head and no worry about the rent. But if you want them to believe youtry to share some of their poverty and see if you can accept it as Gods will yourself!
Thomas Merton
Image
If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell.
Thomas Merton
Image
A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions, is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of choice when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses.
Thomas Merton
Image
The purpose of our lives is to find the purpose of our lives.
Thomas Merton
Image
Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.
Thomas Merton
Image
Grains of error planted innocently in a well-kept greenhouse can become giant poisonous trees.
Thomas Merton
Image
We are obliged to love one another. We are not strictly bound to like one another.
Thomas Merton
Image
For if I am to love truly and freely, I must be able to give something that is truly my own to another. If my heart does not first belong to me, how can I give it to another?
Thomas Merton
Image
Love is an intensification of life.
Thomas Merton
Image
The goal of fasting is inner unity.
Thomas Merton
Image
When ambition ends, happiness begins.
Thomas Merton
Image
By reading the scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet.
Thomas Merton
Image
The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68
Thomas Merton
Image
Our real journey in life is interior.
Thomas Merton