Inspirational Quotes by Thomas Merton
“We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full.”
“The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach.”
“The Need to Win When an archer is shooting for nothing He has all his skill. If he shoots for a brass buckle He is already nervous. If he shoots for a prize of gold He goes blind Or sees two targets – He is out of his mind. His skill has not changed, But the prize Divides him. He cares, He thinks more of winning Than of shooting – And the need to win Drains him of power.”
“If we wish to wrest an advantage from the enemy, we must not fix our minds on that alone, but allow for the possibility of the enemy also doing some harm to us, and let this enter as a factor into our calculations.”
“He who relies solely on warlike measures shall be exterminated; he who relies solely on peaceful measures shall perish.”
“Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.”
“Those who are not grateful soon begin to complain of everything.”
― Thomas Merton ,
from Thoughts in Solitude
“Pride is the beginning of sin. And what is pride but the craving for undue exaltation? And this is undue exaltation - when the soul abandons Him to whom it ought to cleave as its end, and becomes a kind of end to itself.”
“So long as victory can be attained, stupid haste is preferable to clever dilatoriness.”
“They were in the world and not of it--not because they were saints, but in a different way: because they were artists. The integrity of an artist lifts a man above the level of the world without delivering him from it.”
― Thomas Merton ,
“For the ones who are called saints by human opinion on earth may very well be devils, and their light may very well be darkness”
“Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy, but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.”
“A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return. This is the art of studying moods.”
“If you do not take opportunity to advance and reward the deserving, your subordinates will not carry out your commands, and disaster will ensue.”
“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.”
“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 ,
from Thoughts in Solitude
“When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, then society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate.”
― Thomas Merton ,
from Thoughts in Solitude
“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.”
― Thomas Merton ,
from Thoughts in Solitude
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Thomas Merton wrote more than 70 books, mostly on spirituality, as well as scores of essays and reviews. Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding.
Interest in his work contributed to a rise in spiritual exploration beginning in the 1960s and 1970s in the US. Merton's letters and diaries, reveal the intensity with which their author focused on social justice issues, including the civil rights movement and proliferation of nuclear arms. He had prohibited their publication for 25 years after his death. Publication raised new interest in Merton's life.