61 Quotes by Thomas Merton about wisdom
- Author Thomas Merton
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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
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- Author Thomas Merton
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For the birds there is not a time that they tell, but the point vierge between darkness and light, between being and nonbeing. You can tell yourself the time by their waking, if you are experienced. But that is your folly, not theirs.
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- Author Thomas Merton
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Indeed, it is a kind of quintessence of pride to hate and fear even the kind and legitimate approval of those who love us! I mean, to resent it as a humiliating patronage.
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- Author Thomas Merton
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Solitude is a way to defend the spirit against the murderous din of our materialism.
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It is a kind of pride to insist that none of our prayers should ever be petitions for our own needs: for this is only another subtle way of trying to put ourselves on the same plane as God – acting as if we had no needs, as if we were not creatures, not dependent on Him and dependent, by His will, on material things, too.
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- Author Thomas Merton
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The peace produced by grace is a spiritual stability too deep for violence — it is unshakeable
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- Author Thomas Merton
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The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!
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- Author Thomas Merton
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I am beginning to realize that "sanity" is no longer a value or an end in itself. If modern people were a little less sane, a little more doubtful, a little more aware of their absurdities and contradictions, perhaps there might be the possibility of their survival.
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- Author Thomas Merton
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If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.
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