Quote

A faith that is afraid of other people is no faith at all.

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
Afraid
Faith
People

More quotes by Thomas Merton

Image
The God of peace is never glorified by human violence.
Thomas Merton
Image
Ours is a time of anxiety because we have willed it to be so. Our anxiety is not imposed on us by force from outside. We impose it on our world and upon one another from within ourselves.
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
If Zen has any preference it is for glass that is plain, has no color, and is just glass.
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
Image
Zen insight is not our awareness, but Being's awareness of itself in us.
Thomas Merton
Image
We must be true inside, true to ourselves, before we can know a truth that is outside us. But we make ourselves true inside by manifesting the truth as we see it.
Thomas Merton
Image
The truth never becomes clear as long as we assume that each one of us, individually, is the center of the universe.
Thomas Merton
Image
Love is...like a spring coming up out of the ground of our own depths. I am gift. All that I am is something that's given, and given freely. Being doesn't cost anything. There's no price tag, no strings attached.
Thomas Merton
Image
The things I thought were so important -- because of the effort I put into them -- have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.
Thomas Merton
Image
There is always a temptation to diddle around in the contemplative life, making itsy-bitsy statues.
Thomas Merton
Image
Finally I am coming to the conclusion that my highest ambition is to be what I already I am.
Thomas Merton
Image
Man was made for the highest activity, which is, in fact, his rest.
Thomas Merton
Image
For although God is right with us and in us and out of us and all through us, we have to go on journeys to find him.
Thomas Merton
Image
But if you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for.
Thomas Merton
Image
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Thomas Merton
Image
Good moral actions are not enough. Everything in us, from the very depths, must be cleansed and reordered.
Thomas Merton
Image
In the last analysis, the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for 'finding himself.' If he persists in shifting his responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence.
Thomas Merton
Image
A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
Thomas Merton