My Top 10 Quotes from Thomas Merton

Published by mantistm at July 17, 2017

My Top 10 Quotes from Thomas Merton that will inspire you to define the meaning of your life.

Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968) was an American Catholic writer, theologian and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion.“ (source – Wikipedia)

Here is my selection of his quotes I considered my top 10 best.

1. 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.

2. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.

3. Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.

4. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.

5. What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

6. We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have – for their usefulness.

7. The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.

8. We are not at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.

9. We must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves.

10. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.

_ Thomas Merton