Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
How far have I to go to find you in whom I have already arrived.
Thomas Merton
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Already
Find
Arrived
More quotes by Thomas Merton
People may spend their whole lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, once they reach the top, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.
Thomas Merton
True happiness is not found in any other reward than that of being united with God. If I seek some other reward besides God Himself, I may get my reward but I cannot be happy.
Thomas Merton
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
In an age where there is much talk about being yourself, I reserve to myself the right to forget about being myself, since in any case there is very little chance of my being anybody else.
Thomas Merton
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves.
Thomas Merton
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.
Thomas Merton
The world as pure object is something that is not there. It is not a reality outside us for which we exist....It is a living and self-creating mystery of which I am myself a part, to which I am myself, my own unique door.
Thomas Merton
Meditation is one of the ways in which the spiritual man keeps himself awake.
Thomas Merton
The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the other.... The whole purpose of life is to live by love.
Thomas Merton
Thinking about monastic ideals is not the same as living up to them, but at any rate such thinking has an important place in a monk's life, because you cannot begin to do anything unless you have some idea what you are trying to do.
Thomas Merton
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
Thomas Merton
Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.
Thomas Merton
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
Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed - but hate these things in yourself, not in another.
Thomas Merton
It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not what he ought to be. If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: in our impatience we do away with him altogether.
Thomas Merton
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
Happiness that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found.
Thomas Merton
Gratitude takes nothing for granted, is never unresponsive, is constantly awakening to new wonder.
Thomas Merton
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
The sacred attitude is, then, one of deep and fundamental respect for the real in whatever new form it may present itself.
Thomas Merton
