Quote

We cannot find Him unless we know we need Him. We forget this need when we take a self-sufficient pleasure in our own good works. The poor and helpless are the first to find Him, Who came to seek and to save that which was 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
Find
Works
Firsts
Unless
Self
Came
Need
Pleasure
First
Forget
Helpless
Take
Poor
Sufficient
Needs
Lost
Save
Good
Cannot
Seek

More quotes by Thomas Merton

Image
It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.
Thomas Merton
Image
It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives.
Thomas Merton
Image
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
Image
The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing.
Thomas Merton
Image
A man searching for enlightenment is like a man sitting on an Ass in search of an Ass
Thomas Merton
Image
When you reread your journal you find out that your newest discovery is something you already found out five years ago.
Thomas Merton
Image
The pleasure of a good act is something to be remembered - not in order to feed our complacency but in order to remind us that virtuous actions are not only possible and valuable, but that they can become easier and more delightful and more fruitful than the acts of vice which oppose and frustrate them.
Thomas Merton
Image
That is God's call to us - simply to be people who are content to live close to him and to renew the kind of life in which the closeness is felt and experienced.
Thomas Merton
Image
Love is free it does not depend on the desirability of its object, but loves for love's sake.
Thomas Merton
Image
Christ is born to us today, in order that he may appear to the whole world through us.
Thomas Merton
Image
Love is the door to eternity.
Thomas Merton
Image
We cannot love ourselves unless we love others, and we cannot love others unless we love ourselves. But a selfish love of ourselves makes us incapable of loving others.
Thomas Merton
Image
The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
Thomas Merton
Image
Not all of us are called to be hermits, but all of us need enough silence and solitude in our lives to enable the deeper voice of our own self to be heard at least occasionally.
Thomas Merton
Image
The closer we are to God, the closer we are to those who are close to him.
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
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
May God prevent us from becoming right-thinking men-that is to say men who agree perfectly with their own police.
Thomas Merton
Image
When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of prayer in which there is effectively no distraction. My whole life becomes a prayer. My whole silence is full of prayer. The world of silence in which I am immersed contributes to my prayer.
Thomas Merton
Image
To be unknown to God is altogether too much privacy.
Thomas Merton